We all love to be liked. What is more difficult to handle is the knowledge that someone does not like you. Especially if it’s a person you like.
I’m not always the smoothest person in the room and most of the time not silent. I take up space around me. Sometimes lots of it and sometimes less, but rarely no space at all. I speak, I act, I try to be funny, I try to be intelligent, but as I am only human, sometimes these things fail.
I have many nuances and layers – like most people – and even if I do restrain myself at times, most of the time I feel safe to be myself amongst my friends. This is where it gets tricky.
My friends have friends and these friends have become friends of mine over time, or so I’d like to think. But we are friends by proxy, meaning neither of us chose each other first hand – it is because we love our first friends that we let the new friends into our lives.
In this outer ring of friends, sometimes the chemistry stumbles and gets weird. We know that we have to accept and respect each other, but occasionally the chemistry is all wrong. We might not use the same language or have any common references other than our mutual friends. So, the communication and the friendship sometimes get a bit tense. And I’m not even going to mention how all this affects our mutual friends.
For me, at least, it’s difficult because I do like to be liked by the people that I like. I even like to be liked by people that I don’t like. So, when I’m not liked, I feel that there must be something wrong with me. Of course, I know that there’s not more wrong with me than there is with anyone else, but the feeling still pops up. It’s very annoying and, to me, even a bit heart-breaking.
But I must accept this. And perhaps show them some courtesy of self-restraint. It’s just that I find it very sad that I cannot be myself around everyone – especially around the ones I love. The ones that are close to me tell me when I get to be too much and, to me, that shows a lot of love. Another thing is time. Given enough time, we will probably sort it out one way or another. Things like these have a way of not staying quiet. Either it is resolved by love and understanding, or it is resolved by distance. I much prefer the first.