Ever feel like you've been...forgotten?
Let's just be open here...this is a blog that I assume no one reads anyway, and if you're reading this and think I may be (or know for sure that I am) talking about you, well, no hard feelings.
Let's start with a few of my closest friends from high school, now in serious relationships (or at least relationships they think are serious). Back in the day, we'd lean on each other when it hurt, spend weekends together, etc. These were the ones that would have been somewhere in my top eight if Facebook were more like MySpace. And I'm fairly certain I would have been in theirs. But see, since the dawn of their relationships, they haven't really seemed interested in doing anything with me...including talking to me, period. Yeah, they'll say “hey” if we run into each other, but I'm not their boyfriend and I'm not as important. That's a little aggravating in itself, but hey, it happens, right? If they're happy, that's great. It happens to everyone eventually. Then there's my other friends who may not intentionally forget me, they just sometimes have to. My best friend who's worked all summer, and spends most of her days off with me, but those days are few and far between. There's another close friend who has had some personal drama and a lot of other things going on, who just can't. I mean, I absolutely understand both of these circumstances, but that still leaves me, well...lonely. And one of my life-long best friends, (this one is going to be a little more obvious, even though the last ones may have been, too...) who has been dating my brother for several months now. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier, because she's the only one in the world good enough for him and vice versa. And yeah, I get along with them and can hang out with both of them. But I've been in relationships and I'm not stupid and know when I'm intruding. There are more, but I don't want to write an entire novel so I'll continue.
It's like everyone I was close to has moved ahead in their life, left me behind, and I'm just kind of stuck where I am and I'm stuck there alone. Anyone else ever feel THAT kind of forgotten? It's not much fun. My initial reaction was the general sadness and depression that accompany loneliness. Many of my darkest moments, the moments where I wanted to completely give up on living, were as dark as they were because of loneliness. But I've come far enough to know better than to even come close to letting myself go there again-once you're there it takes years to come out of it, if you're lucky. My next reaction was wanting to find someone, find a relationship. You know, the first part of the relationship being all lovey and wanting to spend every moment together somehow.
Then I realized, that's why I feel like I do. That's my problem. I've gotten so dependent on PEOPLE. I mean, since the middle of May, it's been the first time in SIX YEARS that I haven't had some boy on my mind, whether it was wondering if he liked me or wishing I were with my boyfriend or crying over him, it was a continuous thing. I got over one guy by talking to another. And when one would break my heart, I would lean on one of my friends, some of the people mentioned earlier, to get me through it. I might have been lonely, but I was hardly ever actually alone.
How much stronger would I be, spiritually speaking, if I had learned to be alone six years ago rather than learning to depend on people? Where would I be as far as relationships go? I doubt I would have dealt with heartbreak after heartbreak, as I kept finding Mr. Wrong over and over again.
The thing with being alone, as Christians, anyway, is that we're never actually alone. Proverbs 18:24 tells us, “one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (NIV). All of our worldly friends are unreliable to an extent. Whether they're willing to push you aside for a new significant other, or do all they can to be reliable but sometimes just can't, they're still unreliable. God, however, is that “friend who sticks closer than a brother.” That friend who will NEVER forget me. And, according to Deuteronomy 31:6 as well as Hebrews 13:5, he will NEVER leave me and NEVER forsake me. That's definitely more than I can say about all my “best friends 'forever'” and all those boys who insisted they were different, I was different, this time was different, they weren't gonna leave me. I haven't actually been forgotten, not entirely. God's been right here with me, all along, through every misstep I took. Too bad I didn't figure all this out six years ago, huh?
