There is a special type of hurt when you realize you don’t mean as much to a friend as you thought you did. This type of hurt is very familiar to me.
I think of my friendships on a scale of closeness, so I can better understand the type of friendship I have with someone. It’s not meant to be a bad thing, it just helps me distinguish between school friends, good friends and best friends. The scale goes from one to ten with one being “we don’t really have a friendship” and ten being “you are the closest person to me.” Honestly, the scale would probably work better if I used it accurately.
I tend to automatically place all of my friends at a ten, and I give them all of the love and support the person closest to me should have. However, a lot of people in my life are just friends through school and don’t need that level of support. They don’t need the late night talks, the “how have you been doing lately” texts or the “you can tell me what’s on your mind” look. It doesn’t hurt as much for these individuals to let me down. I see it coming, and I am getting better at valuing these friendships differently.
Overvaluing my friendships hurts when I think they actually value me the way I value them. When they do need late night talks, when they are the one texting me about how I’m doing and when they tell me what’s going on.
When I realized the person I valued most in your life didn’t feel the same way, I began to question most of my relationships. At first, it almost didn’t seem real, and I’ve spent months trying to convince myself that it’s just me. Then there came a point where things started to unravel a bit. I’m still trying to hold on, but the person just wants to slip away. Where do you turn when the person you thought would always be there isn’t there anymore?
Now here I am, using an article as a journal entry. So it only makes sense to end this article like I would one of my real journal entries: with a bright side. Despite my lack of understanding for how close my friends really are, I’ve still got a lot of love in my heart for those who do stay. For my friends who reach out just to remind me how much they love me, for my family who Facetimes me randomly just to talk about life and for my timeless friends who I always have a home with. I am thankful for them because they remind me that sometimes you have to work a little harder to find the right people, and that there’s no shame in getting that wrong a few times.