Today one of my friends received a mean text from someone they were friends with during college, but not that close with anymore. Even though they weren't too upset about it, I reacted pretty passionately. I was surprised because it usually takes a lot to get an emotional reaction out of me. I normally react to things by making a joke out of it.
This text started a discussion, between my friends and I, on friendship. Actually to be honest, it was more me ranting about my views on friendship. I should clarify something before I continue. As I talked about in my last blog post, I am not an overly emotional person. When it finally does come out, it just pours out. Usually this pouring out of emotion results in me going on a rant. These rants are not scary or violent. My type of ranting just consists of me talking for a long period of time while pacing around the room and rehashing everything over and over again. It doesn't happen often and is something that not many people can say they have witnessed. The one person who has seen it most often is my best friend. She typically finds the whole thing quite comical. (I will probably talk about her in future blog posts.) Since I am not an angry person, it is always a surprise what thing will set me off.
Overall my rants are a cycle. Phase 1- rant sequence initiated. Phase 2-rant sequence in full force Phase 3- rant sequence completed. Phase 4-embarrassment sequence initiated. Phase 5- as part of embarrassment sequence, apologize to witness of rant (most likely best friend). Phase 6- embarrassment sequence completed. Make joke about rant. So this is how I deal with things. Odd maybe, but I think there are worse ways to deal with things,
Now that you know all about my ranting cycle, we can return back to my current rant. My opinion of the situation was that if the person who sent the text really saw my friend as a friend they would never have sent the text they did. They were angry at my friend, which is a valid feeling, but they went about dealing with it immaturely. I am sure everyone has said something hurtful to someone before. Usually it is not intended to be hurtful, especially when it is directed at someone you care about. That doesn't excuse it. You apologize and learn from your mistake. Because it wasn't intentional, it is more easily forgiven. What is harder to get over, is someone who says something with the intent to hurt you. In my opinion a real friend would never intentionally say something with the sole purpose of causing you pain. That is something I couldn't forgive. To me I would never be friends with someone like that.
I don't just call anyone my friend. There are different levels of people, strangers, acquaintances, class friends (people who you hang out with in class but never outside of it) and then friends. So I have no problem, as I bluntly put it, "cutting you out". Now I know my friends think I'm exaggerating and I will admit that it probably does depend on the situation (I mean never say never), but overall I couldn't let someone who hurt me deeply back into my friend circle. So for me if I was the one who received the text, I probably wouldn't consider the sender a friend.
I also can't consider someone truly a friend if I don't really talk to you or interact with you. I don't think drifting away from a person is a bad thing. People change and drift apart. For example, people I hung out with during high school I don't really talk to now. I think this is fine. I enjoyed their company and they are great people. I wish them all the luck in whatever they are doing and if I bumped into them I would catch up. But are we still friends? Not really. And I don't think that I'm terrible for thinking that.
OK well I've come to the end of my rant. Here comes the next part of the cycle. I apologize for sounding so extreme. I'm just very particular about who I consider a friend. OK. I'm going to stop before I start another rant. Wow, ranting is exhausting.
No comments:
Post a Comment