{"id":437,"date":"2019-10-12T09:35:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T13:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/?p=437"},"modified":"2019-10-10T14:37:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T18:37:44","slug":"soulful-saturday-friendship-online-and-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/12\/soulful-saturday-friendship-online-and-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Soulful Saturday: Friendship, Online and Off"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hey there everyone! Today, I want to talk about a very important topic to me: Friendship. Friendship isn\u2019t something that occurs in a day to me- it takes time, it takes conversing, and- okay actually, cut that. That\u2019s how it should be, not how it is. For those of you that don\u2019t know already, I have borderline personality disorder. My views of people can change at the drop of a hat. So that makes me wonder\u2026 Why do I feel loyal to my friends, and not feel that light switch go on and off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think to start this conversation with you, it\u2019s best if I make something clear: I\u2019m not talking about online or offline separately. I\u2019m talking about friends of all forms. For me, a friend is a person I feel safe with. I feel they\u2019re honest people, and not people I have to fear losing as easily. This feeling is strongest when I first meet people, online or offline. However, the closer I get to people, the more I usually pull away\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is it I have certain friends that I\u2019ve had for years now? I certainly feel unusually close with them as time\u2019s passed. Have I improved my ability to trust people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to that is probably a yes. Or rather, I hope it is. See, just last week I met up with an online friend for the first time (as in first time meeting this particular friend, mind you! I\u2019ve met others before this.) I was offered a free ticket to join her at Comicon, which was my first time going to a convention by the way. Trusting someone so much that I\u2019d want to meet up with them and even go to a big event that\u2019s sure to bring me anxiety and such isn\u2019t exactly my norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing outside my norm that I did recently: I texted my offline friends just to check on them. I\u2019m not a big phone person, but texting is something I feel comfortable with. However, I don\u2019t normally text friends that much. The last time I\u2019d texted these friends was in April! I had nothing really to talk about with them, but I wanted to see their names, and to see how they were doing. I\u2019m never good about keeping in touch. It\u2019s just part of my internal algorithm, if you will. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This just brings me more questions and, surprisingly, more anxiety than I can shake a stick at. What led to these changes? Is it actually a good thing I\u2019m doing these things? Sure, I\u2019d talked to my friend from the Comicon adventure plenty of times- we\u2019ve been friends for years through a common interest, and we\u2019ve even video chatted many times, alongside our mutual friend circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s another thing I\u2019d like to mention- I never even wanted to video or voice chat with people only a year ago. When did I start wanting to hear the voices and put faces to the names I\u2019d used for them so long? It feels as if I\u2019ve changed drastically in just a couple years. I just don\u2019t know what lead to it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s a good change- I hope it is, at the very least. Still, I can\u2019t quite put my finger on the trigger for these changes\u2026 and that bothers me a lot. I\u2019m thankful to have the friends I have, whether it\u2019s my friends from middle school I texted just the other day or online friends like the one I went to the city to meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just feel a little rattled by the fact that, for the longest time I\u2019d been the type to pull away the closer I felt to people. To suddenly realize I\u2019m not doing that\u2026 It makes me feel vulnerable and scared, even if it also makes me feel a sense of relief and accomplishment. I must be lucky I\u2019ve met so many kind, honest and patient people!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you consider the most important thing in a friendship? How often do you communicate with friends, and how do you personally prefer these communications work? As someone new to keeping in touch with friends and trying to keep them, I could really use the feedback from your own experiences. Let me learn from you- and maybe, if I\u2019m lucky, you\u2019ve in some way learned from me what not to do based on my past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to read my ramblings about the deeper parts of my life. I hope you\u2019ll share your own experiences with me someday- and I hope mine can do something for you, too! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey there everyone! Today, I want to talk about a very important topic to me: Friendship. Friendship isn\u2019t something that occurs in a day to me- it takes time, it takes conversing, and- okay actually, cut that. That\u2019s how it should be, not how it is. For those of you that don\u2019t know already, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[33,2,146],"tags":[52,174,173,95,40],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8uAZQ-73","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrolik.caludin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}