trying too hard

Sometimes I do this thing where I try really hard to be everyone’s friend and have everyone like me. Okay, not sometimes. I do this all. the. time. And it’s really annoying — not only to the people who I’m trying to be friends with, but to me. It’s annoying to me.

I can feel the desire to be friends with someone rising in me the moment a conversation starts. It’s not like, “oh hey, this person is cool and they’d be cool to talk to.” It’s more of a “oh my gosh. i need to be extremely good friends with this person because they’re awesome and our friendship could be mutually beneficial if we actually cared about each other.”

I’ll tell you what… rarely has this thinking ever gotten me anywhere. Usually I wind up being friends with the people I originally couldn’t stand or had absolutely no interest in talking to. Which is sad, and funny, and I always get smacked in the face with that by God and it humbles me and I am thankful. But sometimes, often, I can point to someone and decide that I want to be friends with them and I’ll do whatever it takes to get that title of “friend.”

And this declaration gets me absolutely no where. Usually I annoy myself this. Usually I annoy others with this. Usually I wind up hating myself for trying to be so well-liked and I end up realizing that I’m being dumb and should probably be content with being surface-y, fringe-like friends.

I’m learning to be okay with surface-y, fringe-like friends. They’re not always terrible. The only terrible part is that most of my friends, if not all, are surface-y, fringe-like friends. And it’s not a bad thing. Some people are less surface-y. Some people are less fringe-like.

Other than that, I’m a fringe-friend hoarder. I’m friends with lots of people on the most surface-y level imaginable… “hey, how are you?” “Great, you?” “Great.” “Okay, see ya later.”

What a great friendship, eh?

Where is the depth? The real talk? The accountability?

I think I yearn for those things because it’s so hard to find, and once you find that in someone it’s sometimes hard to keep.

So, I continually try too hard to be friends with everyone. On a deep, real level… which annoys everyone involved. So I stop trying, and step back and settle for fringe.

Yep.