Bunny’s TMI

Nothing interesting to report today really, so here is some more background stuff.

Let’s see, the first person (outside of family) that I felt I ever loved as a friend was this girl TC. I didn’t like her at first because we both liked the same guy, and he liked her more. But as we all hung out I got to know her better and we became really close. Previously all my friendships would go like this: I’d start hanging out with someone I had classes with, we’d be “best friends” all year. And then I wouldn’t hear from them or see them all summer. Rinse, repeat. TC was the first person who I stayed close to for more than a year. It was also different because she was a year older and went to a different school and lived across town, so we certainly weren’t friends because it was convenient. Unfortunately, after we’d been friends for about 2 years, she stopped talking to me (I later found out it was because her controlling boyfriend told her to). So that really took me a large step backwards in my progress with making female friends, but at least I finally had an idea of what friendships should be like.

My next best friend – my Big Bro – I met roleplaying. I only have one friend that I’m still in touch with from junior high, and although we’re good friends, we’ve never been terribly close. We’re there for each other, but we don’t open up about really deep personal stuff. So my Big Bro is the close friend I’ve known for longest. One of the most important things I learned from him is that when you love a friend and they’re important to you, you hold on to that, and time & distance mean nothing. I’m very very happy to be talking to him again more regularly, though I’ve missed spending time with him ever since he moved away. Around the time we became friends I slowly started moving away from unhealthy relationships. My relationships were still not healthy, but I stopped putting up with being treated really badly like I had before. I think having him respect and care for me helped me start to respect and care for myself more.

I think the next person I met was my calculus savior CD. We never got terribly close, but he was so fun & funny & intelligent & nice that I knew I wanted to stay friends. We lost touch for a few years when he went off to some engineering college. Every once in a while I’d send an email to his old address and search the net for him. It finally paid off and we’re in touch again. Talking to him and hearing about his life & relationship has helped me figure out what I should be looking for & working towards.

Moving to Davis was the biggest boost for my friendships. It was really hard and slow at first, but being in the university environment made it a lot easier to find quality people. PH was my very first friend that I made here (hahaha! and you’re still stuck with me 5 years later!!! nya nya). He was a huge help keeping me sane through college and my various relationships. I also met most of my other friends like DN (my personal therapist – I’d lay on his bed and vent till late at night while he played on his computer), Tiger and MS.

It really seems to me like my relationships kept pace with my friendships, probably because I firmly believe that a relationship should be built on friendship, so the more I learned about friendship and the better I got at being a friend, the better I was at relationships too.

The huge step DN helped me make earlier this year was realizing that my self esteem was not what it should have been. I liked who I was, but I didn’t value or respect myself – I put everyone before me and wasn’t taking proper care of myself. That started a long chain of reactions and I feel like I’ve learned more about me and life in this past year than in the previous 24. I think part of it was finally shifting my focus from “helping” other to working on improving myself more actively. One of these nights I’ll list all the books that helped me with all this too.

Ok, off to put a bit more food in me.