finally realizing

If any of my friends actually read this blog, they will nod their heads in agreement when I say I am quite possibly the most experienced relationship mess maker there is.

I like to make messes with paint and food and clothes that I hate to put away, but the messes I tend to make with relationships are not so fun. In fact, they are painful.

My best friend when I was in elementary school and early middle school was Marcia Lynn. She and I could be silly together and played pretty well together. We stayed over at each others' houses and went on vacation together. In the summer of 6th grade, something happened. We got in some sort of argument and that was it. We were no longer friends. It was as if our friendship had just vanished into thin air and nothing was left.

I regret losing Marcia Lynn as a friend. I've even gone so far as to send her notes saying "Happy Birthday" and such, 17+ years too late.

I don't know what it is with me and relationships. I want to be good at it. I want people to like me and I want to be known. I want to know other people too. I want to be connected and have warm fuzzy friendship groups like this , but what ends up happening is something more like this .

Big mistake number one: Try to make meaningful relationships
To tell you the truth, I'm pretty sick of it all. As I've mentioned before, we're pretty isolated in this Hyaets world of ours. If I had to choose from those who are around me in my daily life, I'd have my pick of prostitutes, crack addicts, xcons, and children to be friends with. Don't get me wrong here, these people are my friends, but they are friends in a different sense of the word. They are folks I can tell jokes with and eat dinner with, but they are not folks who I can reveal my whole self to.

(I'm sensing at this exact moment some sort of sermon within myself asking the question, "Why not, Helms? Why can't these people be your deepest friends? What is within you that is holding them back from being who and what you need?" But, I'm not going to listen to that voice inside of me right now because I'm needing to rant and not to be convicted.)

Big Mess number two: The "talk"
And what is it with friends anyway? How come we can not (as friends) have "the talk)? The one that helps us to figure out just what kind of relationship we are in. Wouldn't you like to know if the one you are friends with has decided they are not going to call as much any more or get together as much any more because they've moved on from the friendship? Wouldn't it be nice to know that you are so loved and cared for that your friend can't bear to see you go for a week of vacation? Man, I sure would like to know when I'm being stupid and thinking that our friendship is still close when the other thinks we were really good friends a couple of years ago. And I wouldn't mind knowing what I could do better to make the friendship better. And I'd love to be able to tell someone how they could be a better friend to me.

I guess those conversations are usually off limits because then we'd have to actually acknowledge that friendships exist, that we depend on someone else for something, and that we have to actively work at being a friend.

Big Mess number three: Hope for mutuality
Have you ever wondered about any of your friends what would happened if you just stopped calling? There have been times in my long list of friendship mess ups that I have wondered, "If I stopped calling this person all the time, would they ever call me? Would they ever notice?" The answer is no. I've tried it. They won't call you. They won't mention they ever noticed you hadn't called. And the friendship will be at a distance at best.

Big Mistake number 4: Try to clean up your mess
There have been several times when I've tried to go to my friend and say, "Look I see this is happening between us. (discomfort, distance, anxiety)" We have a discussion about it and I end up feeling like it wasn't a "we or us" thing after all. It was just me. Either I was the only one feeling this way or I was the one feeling this way and so was the other person but the other person was feeling this way because of something I've done or felt or perceived that has caused us to be this way. And by trying to address the situation and talk about it, I've just made things worse. Because now these negative feelings are out in the open and they can be brought back up again and again.

Big mess number 5: Once you mess up, you and your friends will think you're gonna mess up again, and so you will.
Here's how it works. I mess up with friend one. Friend two sees that I messed up with friend one and even consoles me while all that is happening. Then when something unrelated but somewhat similar happens in friend two's life, they remember what happened with me and friend one, and the problem is escalated because now not only have I messed up with 1, but I've messed up with 1+2=3. And so on and so forth.

Big mess number 6: Blame it on your circumstances
Maybe the lack of friends and feelings of isolation are not a result of Hyaets, but instead are a result of being a relationship mess maker. I should stop trying to blame it on theology, practice, neighors, area in town. I should go ahead and just come to realize that these are not the problems. I am.

Ok, so I've written enough ranting for now. I've written this rant partly out of the truthfulness of my own feelings, but also somewhat jokingly so as to be entertaining. Please read accordingly. Thank you.