“You Need to Learn to Communicate”…

…though it’s actually me that needs to learn. Before I begin spoon feeding advice on how best to be a friend, I must check myself. Once again I’ve been a rotten friend, allowing disappointment to lead to frustration, followed by insults and name calling, creating bad blood where there was hardly a relationship to begin with.

Why I keep doing this is beyond me. Or is it? Do I create drama because I’m so immature that I need some measure of turbulence in order to feel alive? I’m a passionate person, certainly, so this is entirely possible. But how in the world could I possibly not know this about myself at this age?

Because I do know myself. I do know that I’m a passionate person, passionate in my approach to life, in my approach to friendships…when I meet someone I feel a connection with, I immediately jump, pulling out all the stops. At risk of overwhelming said friend.

“Passionate” is a cop out, though. I’m emotionally immature and unstable. Saying I’m passionate has a nice ring to it; it re-scripts events as if I was merely acting out a potentially admirable aspect of my personality. But passion, when it comes to this case, does not properly describe my behavior. I was mean. I was creepy. I was destructive, both to myself and to this blossoming friendship.

To put it plainly, I felt hurt, and so I hurt in return. My friend said she wasn’t dating; I should have accepted this but would not. So what happens? I begin to assert my will, following her obsessively (online, not in person) and going so far as to leave a gift on her doorstep (in person). To be fair to myself, the gift was more intended as an offering of friendship and respect. I didn’t want her to feel cheap. I wanted her to know that I cared. Still, I must be completely honest here: I also harbored hopes of resuming an erotic relationship.

I’m an honest person. So I’ll state that though I’m writing this knowing it will provide me with some insight on my behavior, I’m also hoping my friend will stumble upon this and learn a little about why I’ve been such a creep.

Creep. It’s a word I’ve been returning to a lot lately. It’s like a self-fulfilling declaration: I state that I’m a creep and then proceed to become one in the eyes of myself and others. My best friend told me, just the other night, that I become obsessed with “things”; I dug a bit deeper, “People, you mean?” She agreed but clarified that I wasn’t simply obsessing on people. “You get obsessed with things. Things you shouldn’t get obsessed with. Why can’t you get obsessed with the things you need to become a better person? Why can’t you get obsessed with finding work, with forwarding your career?”

And it’s true. My best male friend says it’s not so much obsession as sensitivity; he knows I’m a lover and want to be loved by someone. Someone besides myself. He almost forgives me for acting out this way with my newest friend. But then I tell him I messaged her, in a moment of heated frustration, that she was indeed as cold as her ex-husband had declared her to be. That might have done it, he tells me, though not in those particular words. He means that I undermined any chance I had at achieving a more constructive closure, one that might leave me with the hope of reconciliation while properly and rationally explaining to the girl my behavior. “I don’t know what to tell you”, he says.

Returning to this (nearly) psychotic state of frustration is a pattern of mine; I seem to fall in lust (I want to say “love” but it’s simply not rational) quickly, entirely, and the result is always disappointment and sadness. In between occurs a rage that I find profoundly disturbing. Just when I begin to feel good about myself I find myself pissing on someone I hardly know (and in this latest scenario can’t be said to know at all, aside from our momentary intimacy). It is disgusting; it’s Jekyll and Hyde all over again.

Perhaps this latest episode will prompt me to write more; something good has to come out of this.