friends

i always get bent out of shape thinking about whether my friends like me or not; like, if i have a really horrible time, or one of us is in a bad mood, or if they don't call forever, or someone lets slip a nasty comment... and get started thinking "no one who actually likes me would do/say that."

And I'm not trying to say that the secret reality of things is that everyone likes me. But the secret reality IS that my feelings towards any individual friend (at any given time) is not this constant overflowing of good will. I have problems with every single one of my friends, and some of my best friends, I have more problems with than anyone. Strangers, people in my classes, at shows, etc., have much more uniformly-positive appreciations in my mind than people I am really close to, about whom I may do nothing but bitch. And my friends are jerks to me, and I am horrible to people I really like and oh-isn't-life-too-short for all this... etc.

My parents, who I dearly love (hi mom!), I have more complaints about than some people whom I totally dislike, but (provided they are following this argument) I also in the final reckoning do NOT have a mixed or qualified love for my parents.

Or, say, a girl I like, with whom things are not going well, or not going at all (purely hypothetical, right?)-- well, I still like that person more than anything or anyone else, and would drop everything to see her or give up pretty much anything to have things work out---- and yet, most of my thoughts about this person would be of frustration, carping, etc. But my good opinion of this person is not *at all* reduced by this.

There are some people, duh, that I feel so-so about, but they don't occupy my thoughts. And really the thing with life is that you can't assume a single causality for things like a bad encounter, or even something actually falling apart. We (I) are so caught up in ourselves (myself) that it is easy, even if it is your favorite concept, to forget that things are over-determined, that the way one situates our relationships with other people is as likely to be insufficiently complex, as it is to be completely incorrect or entirely misplaced, because of some factor we never stopped to consider.