Realizations

I've often considered myself blessed with friendship. I have a great number of friends that I would consider to be true friends; friends who are there for me through thick and thin. ...But I'd never realized that my personality left me vulnerable to fake forms of friendship. People... some people become my friend because of what I can do for them, or how I make them feel. And I'm only now realizing that that has happened mulitple times in my life.

Most recently was a woman friend of mine. We'd been coworkers for two years, began to get close over the summer, and were exceptionally close over the last month or two. She was smitten with another guy, and hounded by a baby-daddy. I was her sounding board, and her strength. I told her that I was getting interested in her as more than a friend, and I needed to back off in order to maintain the friendship. ... She told me that my admission of feelings had shattered her trust in me and ruined our friendship, and that we couldn't be friends anymore.

This was devastating to me, because I can't fathom discarding any of my friends so callously. And it was only the advice of another friend that helped me to get over it.

He told me that she was using me. Maybe it was intentional; maybe it wasn't. But whichever the case, she liked having me there. She liked that I was at her beck-and-call whenever she needed me, and that she didn't have to really invest anything in return. She liked that I was in a sort-of in-between area, where she could treat me like a friend and be treated in return like a girlfriend. And when I realized that and opted to change it, she acted like I did something wrong so she wouldn't have to deal with it.

I didn't want to believe him. It's not the first time I've been in this situation with a woman, and it's not the first time I had people tell me I was being walked on. I didn't believe it the other times either.

The reason that I didn't want to believe all those people is because people said the same thing about April, and I know for a fact that April never used me. April is my friend, pure and true.

And then I realized that was the difference between April and the other girls... April is my friend. When things got tough, or weird, she didn't discard me. She didn't keep me around when times were great, and abandon me when I told her (repeatedly) that I liked her. April remained my friend, and these other ladies were all-too-ready to let me go.

April liked me for me, not because of how I made her feel...

Thank you, April, for being my friend.