I Found the Perfect Man...But It's Not Romantic

I gave up on finding the "perfect" man years ago.  I don't have any hopes of finding a guy who'd want to date or marry me.  I've learned not to expect any kind of compliments from men, because they don't normally compliment the fat girls.  I basically gave up on men altogether, aside from my dad and my best friend.  I remember talking with a girl friend of mine last year about how "men are pigs."  We were joking, mostly, but there was a part of us that believed that was the case with the vast majority of men.  And then I decided to go back to college this spring and take a Theater Appreciation class and I met him.  A man I barely knew who actually talked to me, listened to me, joked with me, teased me, and told me more than once that I looked really nice or pretty on a particular day.  And there's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about it, he's just genuinely nice.  I can't tell you how refreshing that is or how much it means to have someone say that to me.  I don't get a lot of compliments on my looks, rarely from girls and never from guys.

I remember being younger and sometimes fishing for compliments when I'd put extra effort into how I looked.  I wanted so badly to be noticed, to be told that I was beautiful because I didn't think I was beautiful, I needed someone else to tell me that I was.  I don't care so much about my looks these days, I don't generally put in any extra effort to look nice.  I'm not trying to impress anybody anymore.  At this point I'm pretty much like, if you don't like the way I look or who I am, you can take a hike cause I don't give a crap what you think about me.  Okay, so not entirely true but I've gotten much better about just being myself and not trying to be someone else or trying to impress others.

Never Take Friendship Personal

So I realize it's been quite some time since I've gotten on here.  My life has simply not been interesting enough to write about (I work at a dry cleaners.  Can you say boring?) and I haven't had any profound thoughts to talk about either.  So I ended up just letting things slide.  As I have often said in the past, we'll see if I can't do better.  Don't hold your breath though, you might be holding it a very long time!

So life really has been fairly boring.  I work mornings, go home, and stay home.  I go out with a select group of friends once or twice a week, but that is literally the extent of my social life.  I'm actually going to see a Christian romance film that's showing for one night only on Monday night and I'm actually kinda terrified because 1) I won't really know anyone there and I don't know the people I do know who are going very well, and 2) it's a romance which is the kind of movie I always avoid because they depress me.  Aaaaah!  Freaking out in 4...3...2...1...days. We'll see how it goes.

In any case, I find my lack of a social life to be rather ironically amusing because I was so much more social when I was younger and I always figured I would have even more of a social life as I got older.  Nope!  How things change.  I think that point has really hit home recently with checking out my Timehop the last couple of weeks and seeing all the friends I used to have and all the people who liked and commented on my various social media posts in years past.  It's just made me realize how much, as I've gotten older, I've fallen out of touch with those people and failed to really make any other lasting friendships.

Because of A Knife

Isn't it funny the things that bring people together again?  There's that person that you've had a falling out with or you just grew apart or something happened, and you figure that it's all over, nothing is ever going to change that, and in some cases, maybe you don't want it to change.  I had that happen recently.  If you had told me six months ago that I would be talking with ex-best friend, trying to hang out and sitting next to each other, I would have told you to go have your head examined.  No lie.  And if you had told me that the event that would cause us to really start talking would be me going to her house to borrow a knife, I would have sent you to an institution.

But that is exactly what happened.  The two of us hadn't talked, civilly or at any length, for probably one to two years, although in more recent times, really since my grandfather's death, we'd actually talked a few times.  But what changed everything was the day we were at our house in Edgewood, finishing packing for our move and we realized we hadn't brought a knife to cut our sandwich.  So my mom had me call, hmm, I'll call her Mary, though if you know me, you probably know who it is anyway.  Anyway, so my mom had me call Mary and ask her if I could borrow a knife.  She said sure so I headed next door to pick up the knife.

The Gift of Friendship

There are many times when we take friends for granted. We assume they're always going to be there, that we'll be friends forever, that nothing will change or destroy that friendship. In one instant, in one act, you can lose the best friend you ever had. Over time, from petty little arguments and deeds, a friendship can fall apart. I've learned both of these from personal experience. And losing those friends, can be heart breaking. My dad always told me, that friendship is like a garden. You need to water it, to nurture it, to prune it to keep it healthy and to allow those plants to grow to their full potential. You need to have the initiative to take care of that garden and you need to be willing to give the time needed to care for it. It's exactly the same with friendship. You need to take care of that friendship, stay in contact, spend time together. When you don't any of that, the friendship starts to die. And there are times, when that friendship can't be revived.