| May. 8th, 2007 @ 10:42 am (no subject) |
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Today is my birthday. Like other years I have gone to great lengths to NOT tell anyone, but for the first year I've sat down and wondered why I do this. I can start off my saying that although I like attention as much as the next person, it just makes me uncomfortable sometimes. I like when I feel like I've accomplished something sure, but it's these odd 'congratulations you made it around the sun again!' type of occassions that I tend to shy away from. Though, while sitting in bed this morning I was slapped upside the head by the reality of the situation - that for people who have trouble expressing their emotions, a birthday is the perfect time to show their appreciation for someone else. And it's this kind of appreciation that is the basis for all our relationships in life.
This past weekend was the bachelor party for a good friend of mine from high school, DeMar. A dozen of his friends gathered in Santa Barbara to do one last bar crawl before he gets married this summer. Now, DeMar isn't the most exciting guy, or the best conversationalist in the world, but he is just a damn good guy. Like me he doesn't really like attention, but unlike me he goes out of his way to show his appreciation for his friends, even if all he can do is slump back in a chair and give them a big goofy drunken grin. I had never before this weekend seen so many guys all working together to make sure one man had the time of his life. We were all practically falling over ourselves to buy drinks, pay for cab rides, and point out girls they thought he might like to ogle. I was tickled pink that by the end of the weekend, DeMar had a perma-smile glued to his face, even without any wedding committments being broken. For such a quiet, soft-spoken guy, his love for his friends spoke loud and clear.
The 10 hour car ride back gave me plenty of opportunity to think about the weekend. As I came to the self-reflection portion of the thought cycle, I realized this: I suck at maintaining personal relationships. I can make friends OK, but seem to quickly file them away and forget why exactly I became their friend in the first place. It's not necessary to gush everytime I chat with someone I like, but there is a certain love that comes from just asking how someone is doing and meaning it, or sending a note when some event in our life reminds us of a friend and how they've changed us for the better. It's these reminders, especially in tough times, that reminds us who we are, and that we are still human (or whatever we choose to be).
I am hard to get to know. I guess I get so caught up in who I want to portray, that any time my personality isn't sparkling I tend to withdraw from personal contact. I now realize the magnitude of the walls I've constructed in the process, but even more how these walls prevent me from getting out as much as it does prevent others from getting in. So as I poke a hole in this wall and peek out to see hundreds of faces on the outside looking in, I realize how ungrateful I've been. To steal some Robert Jordanian imagery, every life is a fabric, interwoven with the strands of other people who come and go to create the tapestry that is us. Some strands aren't very important in our tapestry, might be there for decoration, and might unravel over time without too much consequence to the overall structural integrity of the fabric. However, some strands are so interwoven with our own fabric that you can't discern one from the other at first glance. If this key strand was missing, our tapestry wouldn't be the same, or in an extreme case, even unravel. To shun or forget people who have influenced us is to close off a part of ourselves, to slowly tug at the strings of our frayed relationship and remove them from our tapestry all together; which sadly is something I feel I'm doing right now.
So while this would be the perfect place to gush, I would rather make a solemn resolution to start deconstructing my wall, to open myself up and let other people into my life. It's a scary proposition, someone getting to know me and all my faults, but it's an even scarier proposition of being cut off from so many people I care for.
I love you all :) (OK, just a little gushing) |
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