Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Love can change people's hearts, can warm dead hearts and bring them back to life. I think that my heart is still coming back to life. I wish that I was a less selfish person ...

I became so cold over the years, so self-sufficient, but always, so lonely for more human companionship. I remember when my heart was tender and much more unselfish. This was 9 years ago, now. There was someone who warmed my heart, which was already much warmer because I was younger and still believed in the love between friends. She warmed my heart - I loved her like a sister. We said we'd never grow apart, that we'd be friends until the day we died, that we would be bridesmaids in each other's weddings. When she moved away, we tried a little bit to keep in touch, but eventually ... we stopped emailing each other, and the pain of having known her up close and losing that was too much. I am sure that I hurt her too.

She was such beautiful ... so vibrant and alive and full of hopes and dreams. So tender-hearted and compassionate. In her shade, I felt inferior in comparison, and sometimes I was even jealous and felt that I was invisible to people when I stood beside her. She was like a star ... only up close - so brilliant that nothing else could be seen when in her presence.

She was so fragile sometimes that I wanted to protect her. I hated seeing her cry. She was light, delicate - like a butterfly. Her love was strong, though - just like a star ... no one could feel alone when in her presence, no one could feel unloved when in her presence. She had so many friends and everyone wanted to be near her. I am still amazed that, for several years, I was one of her closest friends. I don't really understand why she chose me for such an honor. I cannot see how I could have deserved that. Her warmth lit dreams in me and caused me to blossom within my heart. I think that she was in my life for a season so that I could come alive emotionally at a time when I had no direction in my life and no dreams of any kind. I know that God used her in my life greatly. Sometimes I think that I should get in touch with her again, but it has been years since either of us contacted the other. I still have her email address, though. Not sure if it's current. I actually tried to get in touch with her on Myspace last year, but she never responded - maybe that was the answer? I had hurt her too deeply by letting go too quickly? I was not a good friend in that way.

I wish I was more like her. But I'm not. I am me - quietly fiery with artistic passions, committed to a cause, but somehow kind of hollow inside in the absence of love - the love that I give to even my dearest friends now is so pale in comparison with the love I was able to feel even, say, three years ago. Three years ago, there were 5 people I met on Gaia who I fell in love with - not in a romantic sense, but with a very deep love that friends can have. Such a deep love ... But things happened - first I got a job and came home too emotionally drained at night to want to do anything other than escape mindlessly into anime or whatever it was that could take away the horror I felt at what I had to do for a living. Then, my computer got a virus and I was unable to go online for months. Then, when I had to move, the house I was in did not have internet access. So, several months of no contact again. I had some phone numbers - called the ones whose phone numbers I had and told them what was going on. 4 out of 5 of them were people who were hurting so deeply in some way that ... it must have felt like a horrible betrayal that I couldn't be online chatting with them anymore for so long. I didn't call that much. I think I was afraid. I'm not good on the phone, and it felt so different. I was afraid that they were so deeply hurt by me not being able to be around for a long time.

When I finally was able to get online again, about 6 - 7 months later, the bond in that little group had dissolved. I tried to help to gather it together again, but it didn't work. I think that (I was part of a group of 4 people who were all friends) it was too much - it had been too long and the hurt ran too deep. All 4 of us were necessary "ingredients" to that group relationship, I guess. I know I hurt them, because eventually I gave up. I still communicate with some of them from time to time, with the three that I was in a group friendship with, and with the other two who I was friends with separately. How cold I must seem ... how cold I am ... having let go. You could say, "Well, they let go too." But, somehow, I am that person that other people end up seeing as the initiator in a friendship, and when I haven't called in awhile, they think that it means I don't want to be a friend anymore, maybe? I take the initiator role a lot. It's hard to be doing that all the time, because then I wonder if anyone I'm friends with really loves me or if they're just tolerating me because they're too nice to say, "Hey ... I really don't want to be friends anymore ..." There is one friend from that group who pursues me. I know that that friend really wants me in his life. I can trust that he meant what he said when he said that he wanted to be friends for life. The others, I believe also still love me, but I think that my absences due to all this crappy stuff that kept happening me, computer problems, severe depressions, etc. - that it was too much. I should have tried harder. I hope that maybe the love is like an ember that is still warm and can be re-awakened. Sometimes I think that the best thing for me to do, though, would be to completely walk away. I have been nothing but faithless to them in the past two and a half years. The first half year after our meeting was one of the most beautiful times of my life. But, things started to go wrong in my life, and ... I let my problems get in the way - I feel that I gave up too soon, did not try hard enough. Maybe, it would be best if I never contacted them again, or if I just wrote each of them one more time to say to them:

"I will always love you and cherish you in my memory, but my life is too much of a mess right now, and I hurt you so bad that I'm ashamed to face you. I'm going to let you go so that you don't have this flaky, faithless friend that only contacts you once every couple months as a painful reminder of the love that once was. I will pray that you will always be surrounded by friends whose love is stronger and who aren't so bad at keeping in touch. I will pray that somehow, the damage I have done to you by not making our friendship a higher priority in my life will be undone. I hurt you, and I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself for it. I think that letting you go completely would be the kindest thing I could do for you ..."

I want to reach out, to pour myself into the friendships once again so that I might possibly undo some of the major damage to their trust in people that I must surely have done ... but they probably wouldn't trust me, and I'm not sure that I would say that they should trust me. I love them, with as much love as my cold and hollow heart can give, I love them. I always will. Katie, Janine, Kyle, Jacqui, Erica. I love them all, and not any of them less than any of the others. (I wasn't sure what order to list them in >.< So, I started with the two that were separate friendships, and ended with the three that I was in a group friendship with.) I will always love you, friends ... I haven't done right by you, but I will never stop loving you. I wish I was fit to be your friend, I wish I hadn't hurt you. I don't know if I can face you, I don't know what to say sometimes. How many times can I say "I'm sorry that it's been awhile since I contacted you ..." before the words just sound empty and meaningless to you? I need to fight harder to use my time more wisely so that I have time to give to you. But I am thinking that maybe I shouldn't be friends with anyone until I'm a better person, a more disciplined person - better with using time wisely, better with not giving up after it's been too long since I called, PMed, or emailed - better at not giving up after I've messed up by not keeping in touch for awhile. Shame at my failure is what makes me give up most of the time ...

I really think I should let them go, sometimes. I kept thinking, one of these days I'm going to muster all of my courage and lay my heart before them one more time and then fight with everything within me to not let anything get in the way of spending time with them consistently either in chatting online, talking on the phone, & or PMing.

I roleplayed with one of them for awhile, and I let her down so bad in the roleplays. The first time, I became depressed because of my job and then my computer died and the roleplay was deleted by the guild owner for inactivity. Two characters I was rp'ing with hers someplace else, too - but it had been so long that I didn't dare show my face there. After that ... there was a long-term roleplay in which I was playing a foster mother to an NPC child that would someday be played by her (in a year or two?) and it's a site where you get booted for inactivity (got to keep it alive, so rules are enforced to keep people consistent, quite understandable.) Waiting for a profile to be approved ... waiting ... then time passed and I was booted, made an effort to come back a few months later, crappy stuff happened to me and I was also kinda bombing at trying to build relationships with my characters there to keep them active. Booted when I went inactive again for too long. Third strike and you're out, and I ... *embarassed* I was inactive there again ... I got caught up in stuff here, all this crap happened to me in real life, and when I went to sign back in, my password had been disabled. So that's it. I can never go back there, and I let her down so deeply that I am afraid to talk to her. I think it would be better if I didn't. I know that I will definitely not ask her to roleplay with me again because 1 - she has so many characters and can't take on more, and 2 - she has no reason to trust me, and I don't want to give her one, lest I should let her down again ...

I'm thinking about asking them to look at this, but maybe I should just apologize and try, once again to be the friend I should have been? I think I might muster my courage and PM each of them to try to re-initiate contact and begin again ... slowly, carefully ... and refusing to give ground to anything that would steal away the time that I want to give to them. I need to keep myself no a schedule - to literally plan in time for people - if I am to be sure of consistently being the friend that they need me to be.

I ... fell away from my music practice schedule ... kept thinking I was going to end up homeless, getting depressed, freaking out about not being employed and how unstable things are, pouring myself into roleplays to forget ... should I give myself some grace on this and wait until things are a bit less crazy? Until I have a steady income and am not constantly in danger of having to move? No ... but my computer desktop computer just died again, after having a virus recently - bought anti-virus software and it was working, but now, something else is wrong and it won't even turn on, or if it does, there are tons of problems and sometimes the computer will not connect to the internet. As I write this, I am sitting at the desk of the family computer of the family who I rent a room from. No one is home, and they have told me before that I can use their computer when I need to.

The computers I've had over the past 4 years or so have all been hand-me-downs from someone else, so they've been old and unreliable. The only one that wasn't was my Mac laptop, but couldn't update java because I lost the admin password ... one day, the java or whatever was so outdated that the computer wouldn't even connect to the internet anymore ... *sighs*

I think I should hold off on trying to reinitiate steady contact with my old internet pals until I have a good, working computer. I don't want to suddenly disappear from their lives again because of computer problems.

Other problem: the voice lessons I used to practice back when I was doing so are on youtube ... as are the guitar lessons I was planning to follow ... *sighs* Stupid computers ...