This Happened

[Phoebe]

Oh! Hope your dad is ok now! Clot in lung is scary.

And poor akiva! OMG.

[akiva]

[Tahlvin]

[Ronster]

Wow, sorry to hear that. I hope things are improving.

[Ronster]

Spent Sunday morning digging in the mud, fixing a cracked PEX water supply pipe for my mom. On Wednesday I got into some poison oak. I got it all over my face and had to get a shot for it yesterday, uggh.

On the good side I used some "shark-bite) coupling fittings for the PEX tubing and it was sooooo easy. about twice the price of PVC couplers, but there's no glue required and no cure time!!

Also the shot has worked wonderfully and I no longer look like a leprous vagabond...just a normal vagabond.

[akiva]

I've never gotten poison ivy or oak, for which I am very grateful.

Ron, I'm impressed--I am terrible at fixing things, and I'm jealous of people who can.

[Ronster]

[akiva]

[akiva]

I say this every time, but it's always true: Observing colleagues makes me feel horrible about myself.

[Phoebe]

Hello, I am one of those people with anxiety, and I am completely terrified I have done something to grievously offend another one of my friends without knowing it. I have an ongoing phobia of this by now. If it turns out that everything is okay and nothing is wrong, I will just slink back into my dark cave and say nothing further about it. But what if I have done something wrong? What the heck could it have been? I comb my mind for something, some slip-up, some mistake, some offensive comment or gesture or offhand remark, and I have no idea. If I were a well-adjusted rational person I would shrug and go on with my day, but here we are.

[Mike]

You could ask them. "Hey, you know I get paranoid about stuff, so this is just a check in... are we cool? I've been feeling some distance [or however you define it]. If it's just stuff going on with you, then I want to help if you need anything. If it's something I did, then I want to know so I can make it right."

And if your friend is anything like the non-confrontational people in my area, then this will catch them off-guard, and they will defensively tell you nothing is wrong, no matter what the truth is. But their answer will be revealing anyway, and then at least you know you reached out, and if they insist you've done nothing wrong, then it's on them.

I don't know if I'd have the gumption to take this advice myself, but it's probably good advice anyway.

[Phoebe]

This seems like wise advice but I don't think I can do it. Maybe if you ask what you did, that gives further offense and then you have wrecked everything, whereas if you only said nothing, you might be okay and the friendship is still salvageable. And why seek rational closure when you could spend time reviewing the tape of all recent interactions in an effort to identify the act or word that caused offense. Or maybe your friend has the flu or is on a knitting retreat or something so you just aren't going to hear from them for a week, and then if you said something weirdly confrontational they would be like, omg, why is she crazy like that? And then you would have created a problem where there was none. This is why I lurk alone in a dark cave and don't have friends, because it is too complex for me and if I haven't figured it out by now, it's over. If I'm in the nursing home someday I won't care anymore and will just spend my day throwing small objects at my roommate. And this is also why I don't have friends.

[Mike]

Nope. Changed my mind. I absolutely would take this advice, because I HAVE done this before, and I've had friends do it to me. Once I stopped thinking of some abstract "friend" and started picturing my actual friends in this situation, I realized that I could and would do a check-in like this with any of them.

In fact, I'm rather concerned by the idea that you are so emotionally invested in a friend who might reject you for expressing insecurity, yet you still call them a friend. And whether this is something this friend might do or it's just you beating up on yourself... either way, you don't deserve that. You're exceptional, and you deserve people who will support you.

[Tahlvin]

[Stan]

[Kyle]

[Phoebe]

Y'all so nice to me, I will now cry. In this mixed up human world, verbal hugging causes sad crying! But only for a moment, as I have so much work! I will, like, try to take your advice by waiting a day and then maybe calling my friend and presumably the tone of convo will illuminate. It is hard sometimes making friends at work, because you don't know how much friending is work related vs personal related, and then if a wrong comment or move is made in the work political environment, does that harm things because you are more work friends than you thought? The main thing is not to dither over it and just do it. Tomorrow!

Well, in other good news, I did manage to avoid the worst of a family conflict, which could easily have been worse. Maybe spirits from beyond the grave intervened, at least as plausible as astrology.

[Ronster]

I am late to the party as usual, but yeah, what they all said. I have had to ask these questions because the internal dialogue and what ifs was crippling any other friendships I had with worries that I was sabotaging my own friendships...uggh/

You have nothing to lose by being open...also it shows the other person that they are important to you. That is flattering to me when I think about it. I wish someone would ask me stuff like "Are you okay?" "How's life?", etc... I guess I have a fear of being an NPC.

Any person would and should be honored to have you call them friend.

[Eliahad]

I got the high score on the Ms. Pac Man machine at the arcade bar I went to today.

[Phoebe]

Where is the like button?!

My friend still loves me, it's ok. She is just busy. Still feel like I am defective in this area but ALL is WELL!