Buck/party stops here

I've never had a problem making friends, nor do I usually have a problem keeping them. It's been that way since I was in elementary school. I remember friends literally fighting over who carried the label of my "best friend." A lifetime of friendships has meant many years of closeness, sharing and confiding. My closest friends have been around for almost a decade - some much longer. We share and lean and laugh and cry and fight and... all the things you do with someone you are close and honest with. I tend to befriend interesting and intelligent but complex and even difficult people. Birds of a feather.

In my life I've gotten more than my fair share of 3am phone calls about everything from drugs to breakups to scares to just basic nightmares. I'm that friend. I don't even think twice about being that person. The unfortunate side effect of being someone people can lean on is that you tend to fill that role and get locked in it. Something bad happen? Go to Jen. My lack of shyness in dealing with messes means that sometimes it's all I get. If something shitty happens, go to Jen. Otherwise... have more fun elsewhere.

I admit I'm not the biggest party girl. I think a good party involves good wine and gourmet food, not drinking and yelling and acting like a frat party incarnate. I even enjoy not drinking. A dive bar has its place as does cocktails and margarita nights, but I'm most often guilty of doing nothing more than speaking louder than necessary (ok, sometimes much) and laughing so loudly that it fills the room. However, get me excited about a topic and I tend to do those things anyway. I don't believe in escaping who I am - I don't feel trapped by it. And I don't believe in pretending - I'm a little old for that. I prefer honest, open conversations with or without sauce to happy times convos about the good old days or endless "this one time..." tales.

One of my closest friends found me to be this way. I never realized it until a mutual friend of ours moved into my apartment. Despite the fact that the close friend had lived blocks from me for 2 years, I'd seen her in my apartment more in the first few months I had a roommate than the previous years combined... and it was always when they were on their way out. I was the multi-hour phone conversation friend and the "what do I do?" friend and the "I need some help" friend, but I was never the art opening friend or the Friday night friend or the vacation-taking friend. My role was the pillar and the leaning post. I wish it was a one time event that I could blow off, but I've been typecast for years.

Eventually I walk from these friendships. One should be invited to the good and the bad, the pleasure and the pain. Without those things, they drain and take more from me than they ever give - there is no balance in them, though the connection there is true. It is this connection that's nearly impossible to walk away from, however dysfunctional. I assume I have to own at least part of this trend. I must do something to inspire or encourage such thinking and behavior. Not sure what it is.

I think back to so many of those conversations I've had with past friends who fit this description and those discussions we had - the sharing - were so candid and ernest. It was an all-cards-on-the-table arrangement. Sometimes I think that people just don't want that. They don't want to look in the eyes of someone who knows the negative things. They don't believe someone can see those things and still think of them as amazing, lovable people. Personally, I need someone to know my faults and demons before I believe they want to be there. I won't play up to some image they have in their head of who they want me to me. I'd prefer they just knew and decided to stay or go based on as much evidence as possible. Affection isn't affection isn't affection. Realness matters.

My life has been recently populated by restless nights, odd eating, mild depression and the beginnings of emotional extremes. In my world this is my body's way of saying "psst, break's over - stop ignoring it." My body's kind of cryptic though and never says what problem/issue I'm supposed to stop ignoring. I just get to be tortured until I figure it out. I can't ignore these signs. I never can. They don't go away until I wrestle with them, sometimes tearing my life open and apart in the process. This is how I live - moving ever closer to being a full, real, honest me even if it means lots of fighting and tears and sleepless nights in the process. Who wouldn't find that fun?!