The Email Bitch

I like to think I'm so mature, so wise, so adult but standing outside and observing my mind obsessing about trivia, about how others may or may not treat me, I realise I am just as immature as I ever was.  How disappointing.

Read somewhere, wish I could remember where, about being an 'email bitch'.  An email bitch is someone who writes well thought out emails and gets drivel in reply.  The article didn't say that email bitches also reply promptly and carefully answer any queries in emails received.  It didn't say but it goes without saying.  Sad to say, I'm an email bitch.  I address an email received, comment on all aspects, answer any questions and add some news (but not too much, don't want to be boring!) of my own - all with a less than 24 hour turnaround.  What I get in reply may be days or weeks later, short, relating little or not at all to my email and written without care or enthusiasm.

Enough.

I have had enough.  Know it's immature to care what or how other people think but just can't be bothered chasing them anymore.  Had the delight of receiving an email today referring to the poorness of our communication !?!  If people don't want to put an effort into maintaining a friendship, so be it.  Because I live with the almost saintly R who puts a huge effort into maintaining contact with people I felt I was not a 'good' person for not doing the same.  But it isn't me.  I've always been selfish and remain so.  If there is no effort and 'maintenance' going on the other side then let it go, I say.  True friends, like W, remain friends because there is interest and warmth and love on both sides.  Not just on one side, the one who paddles madly just to keep the 'friendship' afloat. 

It's being used, when they are in the mood and 'need' me for validation on how important and wonderful they are, a service I was happy to provide, but with little or no emotional renumeration in return.

And I know, I KNOW! how futile this is.  How puerile.    Someone wrote a self help book years ago, again I don't remember who.  They spoke about the futility of expecting to be 'stroked' in return for the strokes given.  Or, on a more metaphysical level, why is my happiness dependent upon the opinion or actions of others? 

Indeed.

But because I am not wise, nor transcendent or even particularly mature I have stopped being an email bitch.  I'm just being a pure and simple bitch.  I write them still but I'm in no hurry and I write pretty much how I feel.  Which, for them, is not much.

Shhh

Epiphany of sorts.  I am distracting myself from my own life.  I distract myself with 'noise'; television, radio, computer, books, busy'ness.  Why am I afraid to be alone with myself?  I actually thought I liked my own company and smirked a little at those who needed the constant reassurance of company to feel safe, as though being alone was being exposed and vulnerable on a wind-raked mountain ledge.

Now I'm not so sure.  Humble pie time.  My unease isn't as obvious which is why it is perhaps more deleterious to mental/spiritual health.  It was easier to ignore.  I've started doing yoga without the radio, without even the CDs of birdsong.  My finger almost shakes when I press the OFF button.  It was always difficult to turn the radio off, just that little reluctance creeping out, but I decided not to notice.  Now I notice.

First thing in the morning after coming in from chores, before coffee, before anything else I turn on the radio and computer.  The music is classical and although most of it is beautiful it still fills the silence with sound, the computer with fingers of global information.  I am connected!  Except of course it's an illusion.

I have been lonely for my own kind.  Not sure what my kind is except I haven't found them here.  Another reason why I am anxious to move.  Suspect green tree hugging animal loving art making book loving yoga doing vegan eating spiritual questing meditative wannabee types will be more common in the Tweed.  

Have no illusions that I'm good friend material.  If I was I'd have more friends.  I'm too judgmental in that what interests most people doesn't interest me.  Moreover, not only doesn't interest but bores me.  And I get impatient because people seem content with gossip and shopping and the suburban life.  That's quite funny as I find the minutiae of living fascinating.  I can bore the socks off people talking about the lives of local birds.  Insects interest me, the patterns of clouds, the weather, the ever changing scenery, the sounds which surround.    I try and be interested in others, to not talk about myself all the time and I think I succeed but then I get ornery because it seems they always talk about themselves. 

Have a friend who I spent a great deal of time being supportive to when they went through a bad patch.  Out of the bad patch, if I said anything about what was going on in my life, their eyes would glaze over.  I bored them.  Then I thought why am I working so hard at something that should come easily.  The people who have been my friends, even if our paths separated us after a time, were easy to be with.   The energy flowed back and forth without impediment.

So I'm going to quit beating myself up because I'm a loner.  I share this house with my best friend and therefore I am luckier than most.  And I'm going to embrace the silence as perhaps silence will unveil the closest friend I'll ever have.  Me.