experience

i've spent a lot of time this week complaining and feeling sorry for myself. dwelling on the ways my new friendships have fell short. harping on loneliness. not much sleep. i've convinced myself how lonely i am, and have lived accordingly.

when you're lonely, you take everything personally. you are just waiting for an excuse to pile on to your self-imposed sadness. it can be hard to move sometimes.

last night, as a sat yet another night holed up in my room wrapped up in my feelings, i began receiving call after call from the close friends of yesterday. i guess that diminishes these people...my old besties started hollering.

they filled me up. why i was expecting friendships that i've put a fraction of the effort into compared to my closest relationships to do the same for me as my oldest friends, i'm not really sure. of course the new people in my life can't quite do what the older ones have. they don't share an inch of the experiences we have compared with the people who shaped me as a younger man.

you hear growing up from your elders about the importance of patience. once you think deeper on the issue, you realize that patience really goes hand-in-hand with experience.

my sister is getting married in november. recently she was asking me about who i wanted to invite, kind of a covered way of seeing if i wanted to bring my boyfriend or not. after thinking about it for a while, we talked and agreed that dropping the bombshell of bringing my partner around for the first time at her wedding wasn't fair to anyone, including me.

i'm totally okay with this decision. the door is still open. what i do want, though, is for her and my family to have an experience with me being in a successful relationship. it's not so much about patience and time, as it is about exposing them to real time dealings with meeting someone i love and feeling and seeing my happiness.

people have to experience things for themselves in order to understand. talk is cheap sometimes. you have to live it.

the experiences i have with my new friends don't even scratch the surface compared to what i have built with my old ones. i can't expect these people to do the same things as my oldest friends, because we don't really know each other as well. we haven't been through the same challenges. i have to accept that.

it's not about holding on to the old, or embracing the new. it's once again about accepting the now. right now, x and y are visible in my life. i have to create new experiences if i want to get anything out of them. bunkering up in my room won't do anything but sink myself deeper.