With Friends Like These...

So, it's not too often that I rant in my blog. I don't often even rant in my journals. Just not things I like to record I guess. But there is something that has been eating away at me for a while, and seems to be a reoccurring theme for me and I'm just very frustrated.

The few of you who read my blog know I'm not the most socially outgoing person, nor am I the easiest person to be friends with, but you know I try really hard to care about my friends and to help when I can, and just offer prayers when there is nothing left to do. But it seems that most Mormon friends want easy short term friendship and if you expect anything more than that you are going to be left in the dust. The non-Mormon people that I know have a very solid tight-knit, long enduring circle of friends that stick by one another through thick and thin, good traits and bad.

I've been here in D.C. for over a year, and have made very few friends. The closest friend I made was at one time a co-worker and member of my same ward. She is a lot younger than I, and married, so we're not really having the same experiences, but I really cared a lot about her and really valued her as a friend. (and not just because she's the only one I had either. She has a long list of qualities that are really great.) Now, most of her other friends are like her. Young, married, enjoy things like getting together in groups, scrapbooking and arts and crafts. Not my thing. Not my thing on so many levels. I had been invited a couple of times, but really, what am I going to do at one of these functions? I don't scrapbook, I can't afford to start a hobby that I wouldn't keep up, and I have a really difficult time interacting with groups of people. I know those are things that she really enjoy's doing, and I know that friendships are about give and take, but those are just things that are beyond me. So, I've tried to organize other activties that I think we would both enjoy. Racing, hip-hop dance classes (and reader, you know don't you that I don't know ANY hip-hop music...), going to the gym, even shopping, which I kind of hate doing, and other craft classes like soap making. So a mixture of things that I enoy, but also some things that I thought she would enjoy doing.

And I feel like we have both equally been there for one another. I've really struggled with living here in DC and she's listened to me. She's had frustrations about her marriage, and even though I'm not married, I've given her my support. I've tried to be there through her anxiety about her family. When she was laid-off during our reduction in workforce I called her every day to offer a friendly voice, knowing how depressing it can be staying at home everyday, looking for a job.

And we've both flaked out on each other. She offering me rides to church but then not going, or changing the pick-up time by hours, or canceling on the hip-hop class, and I've flaked on her on going to the scrapbooking parties and things of that nature.

So give and take right? But somehow, in the past few months, something has changed, and now I'm considered a 'bad friend'. What exactly? I don't know. I've asked but received no answer, but I will tell you it changed after one particular Saturday. The Friday before we were talking about swimming in her complex's pool while her husband studied for the GRE. I have already mentioned to her that I planned on going to see a matinee and that I had some homework to do. As a planner, I kind of need to have a little bit of a schedule. Since I already knew I had a few things to do, I needed to know in what order to do them. I asked her about what time she thought would work to go swimming. She said she'd have to check with her husband. Friday ended.

My Saturday began. Like every day of the week. I'm up before 6:00 a.m. I went for a 16 mile bike ride, went for a four mile run. Did some homework, planned my weekly menu, walked the mile to the shopping/movie complex, picked up my ticket to a matinee and went to Target to pickup non-perishables. 11:30 am I get a text saying "We're going to play it by ear."...okay, my day started hours ago and since I never heard back from you, my day is now fully scheduled. PLUS, because I can't currently drive, I have to schedule when and where I'm going. You live over 2 miles away from me, so I can't just drop everything and go to your house when your ready, and I've already covered 22 miles, and now I'm supposed to have enough energy to walk anouther 4 and go swimming? I'm sorry that I'm not a play-it-by-ear person and I'm sorry that I wasn't just sitting around my apartment wasting time, waiting for you to call me to maybe go swim sometime during the day.

Aside from her asking me work questions (she was rehired), she hasn't really talked to me too much for the past two months. So I'm a little frustrated that I feel like I'm getting used on the work end of things, and extremely frustrated for being made to feel like I'm a bad person.

Yes! I am an structured, non-scrapbooking, small group, low-key, midly high-maintence kind of person. But am I a bad person who doesn't deserve any friends?