New Normal

I survived the holidays! thank gawd cause it was looking real iffy in the emotional/mental state and health department if I can be honest. I am not sure why this December was so taxing. As soon as I got home from Thanksgiving break I was so excited about the beginning of the holiday season. A week later, once the decorations were up, the presents ordered and the Christmas playlist created...I simply felt I had nothing else to look forward to and spent the next few weeks sulking.

Despite the sulking and melancholy, the last few days have not been that bad. As expected I left work Wednesday afternoon to avoid attending the holiday office party. Around noon that day, everyone just stopped working and casually meandered around the office because it was our last day before the holiday and faking busy can only take you so far. I asked my boss the day before if I could leave early since I was 'unable' to attend the after work party. He said it was fine and the whole day I was counting down to my moment of freedom. I am not sure anyone even noticed when I left my cubicle and jogged out of the office. I am pretty forgetful at work which does and does not bother me much these days.

I ended up spending Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day at my aunts house. It was inevitable, there simply was no way I could get out of spending the holidays with family. I was super surprised by how grateful she was that i was there. After our disastrous D.C trip, I am very cautious of my aunts intention. She can at times be very shallow and nit-picky. But the last few months she seems more tired than anything else and maybe this has soften her a bit. It was kind of nice being around her and my now preteen cousin this year. We literally just baked cookies and drank hot chocolate and watched campy Christmas movies. It was nice.

After two days with them, I headed to back to my little oasis and celebrated a belated and solitary  Christmas. From my previous post you can tell why I wanted to remain home all day. My mood may have been very un-christmas like this year but my apartment was cute as hell. Maybe all of my Christmas cheer went into my decor because I spent the remainder of the holiday weekend in my own little world full of Christmas cookies, pot roast and video games.

With the  New Year just around the corner, life has or will return to normal soon. Hopefully a new normal and I am very grateful for this. Kat and I sort of 'made up' before Christmas but there is still stuff unresolved between us that I hope we'll be able to discuss like adults. I knew I was going to be unable to give her her gifts before Christmas, so I asked her again on Christmas Eve to please drop by my house and pick up her gifts. She refused. Curtly, she explained that she wouldn't be able to pick up the gifts because she had other things to do and I was just going to have to wait until we could plan a day together  to open them.

I. Shit. You. Not.

 I honestly am  quite bored with Kat and I's co-dependent relationship. This isn't to say I don't appreciate her friendship. Because I do and hope we will be friends for life. But in order for this to occur, our relationship will need to adapt. I, like most of the people in her life,  cater to her wants and interests before my own. She is super sensitive and takes things personally and to avoid melt downs, I find myself just agreeing, succumbing just to avoid conflict. It's exhausting. In this case, we hadn't talked in weeks and I wanted her to have gifts from me to open Christmas day. She told me this was out of the question because she wanted to see me open my presents.

I couldn't rationalize why we needed a whole day or evening to exchange gifts, since we've never done it before.I may have said in passing that a traditional gift exchange would be a nice thing to do, but as someone who changes her mind based on the situation, I quickly saw no reason to go through with this plan based on how uncommunicative we've been. But Kat regardless of our recent rift still wanted to come over to my place, drink hot chocolate in Christmas pj's, open presents and watch Christmas movies all night because it is something she wanted to do. It was something that would fulfill her idea of a wondrous Christmas.

It did not matter that I expressed a strong aversion to this. It did not matter that her gifts are now apart of this awkward stalemate between us, STILL sitting under my tree with wrapping paper that has started to wear thin. It did not matter that in holding her gifts hostage at my house she was preventing me from having my version of a wondrous Christmas Day: opening presents from the people I love at home and at peace. Vice versa.

She went on to say she thinks our friendship is one-sided cause I never text first or ask her how she is doing. She thinks in getting rid of her gifts I am also trying to get rid of her. That it is unfair that my mood changes often. That she was only being overwhelming these last few weeks because while i tend to turn off  from the world and take time for myself when i am going through something...she cannot. That she didn't want to disappoint her brother and that's why she kept hounding me about plans. And that she thinks I resent our friendship because of my desire for independence.

I. Shit. You. Not.

I did not and do not know how to respond to this. How do I? Because honestly this is not the kind of adult friendship I want with someone. Especially not with Kat. She hates change and I know if she could have it her way, we would hang out every Friday at my house watching Netflix and eating food (she actually wanted to incorporate another day hanging out at my house so we could play video games and eat food). When not at my house, I know she would love me to continue providing companionship to her brother during our monthly group outings. I know she would love for me to be the person who tags along to the book expo's and concerts she wants to attend. I know she would love for me to be the person who always hits up the exhibits she wants to see and the stores she wants to shop out.

In being this person, I am losing my own sense of self. Oh, and I am bored,  incredibly bored. I admit, I don't text first, I admit that I am moody, I admit that instead of bombarding people with my own shit, I internalize and retreat so i can blog about it instead. I do not think this makes me a bad friend. I just think it makes me a different kind of friend she has ever had and her need for control in all aspects in her life has bled over to mine. She loves consistency, and routine and order...all things i freaking loathe and being her friend means that I have sacrificed a bit of myself just so we'd be on the same page.

But I am drained. I feel like one of those puppets controlled by string. All my actions are influenced by someone else and I want to cut the strings. Just so I can roam freely and try something new. I love my place more than anyone will ever know. It is my escape from the world, but the last place I want to be on a Friday night is on my couch watching netflix. I have my whole life to netflix and chill. And when Kat is there all we do is watch TV, and eat and talk about our week like an old married couple. It's nice every once in a while but every week is isolating.

I'd be cool with going to the gym, or taking a class or bowling, even bowling on a Friday night instead of sitting up in my house doing nothing. And maybe I have not been as vocal about this as I should have. Maybe this desire to try new things and meet new people has little to do with Kat and our Friendship. Maybe this is just something I need to do for myself to feel okay about my life, and because I often feel restricted from branching what once was enjoyable has quickly turned to resentment. I feel caged and I just want some freedom. A little.

And if this year was all about Moving On, I hope that that the next year will continue to be about Growth and Independence. I hope I can create a new normal for myself that continues to surprise me.