Winnie the Pooh on Friendship

You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.---Winnie the Pooh

I am so thankful for the true friends in my life.  I don't have throngs of them, but the ones I do are ones I can depend on, ones who I can say anything to, and are solid gold to me. 

I'm tired of being constricted on what I can or can't say, what I should or shouldn't say, or worrying about my every word being misconstrued constantly.  How fair is it if I have to hold my tongue quite a bit and the other person gets to spew out exactly what they think every single occasion there is conflict?  Oh yes, there's the going quiet part and sometimes I think that is the saving grace of it all.  Every time something comes in the range of vision, hearing, or awareness that is not liked, immediately there is a comment, or judgment, body language (followed by a comment) or something to OBVIOUSLY indicate to the other person that says they screwed up again.  How many times can a person screw up before it becomes obvious the friendship it not what either of them thought it was?  At some point, you become like an idiot who keeps going back thinking something different will occur. 

If that person is not happy with themselves, then NOTHING will ever be right.  Not other people in their lives, not what those people do or say, how they love, how they eat, what they eat, anything.  I am seeing it all so clearly now.  Crystal.  I get it.  I see how others are affected by it as well and it's exhausting me not to be able to say anything, or to act on it, its exhausting me to just sit by like Switzerland, as neutral as the day is long, watching it all swirl around me.

It makes me more grateful for sanity, for love, makes me more grateful for the happiness in my life.  I am drawn to that more and more and pushing further and further away from the other stuff.  It's getting dangerously beyond the point of repair.  I suppose that is my answer. 

Thankful for my friends, for truth, for understanding of who I am and acceptance of that.  Those that don't have that for me are simply not ones I need to be around.  How many signs on the side of the road do I need to see?  How many red flags?  I think I've passed one of the last signs.  I read that last one very clearly.

Winnie the Pooh, he's a pretty smart bear.