Trimming Out the Pieces

 

Photo by Jeffrey.

I think life is a constant reexamination of your environment and cutting out and putting in things that either don't matter or do.  For example, over the past few weeks I've been thinking about friendship.  When I think about what I want in a friend and how my friends have been treating me I realize that they are not the same.  I had two friends, called L & J.  L was never really my friend to begin with; in fact, he was my next door neighbor at school and I thought he was pretty cool.  He was dating J.  This is how I met Jeffrey.  We all ended up living together, in a manner of speaking, and several times L & J upset me or I witnessed them using me or Jeffrey (mostly Jeff) for their own gain.  It took almost two years but finally I cut L & J out of our lives completely.  Yes, I also cut them out of Jeff's life, because he's too nice a person and would let them continue to walk all over them.  L & J were the catalyst for this "trimming out the pieces" aesthetic that has been my life recently.  I now know full well who my friends are, who is just an acquaintance, and who pretends but isn't really anything at all.  I just went through my Facebook and deleted nearly 20 contacts of people that I only had on there because we went to high school or college together, but we never really talked and there was no point in labelling them as a "friend", even in the online world, because they just simply didn't qualify.

Inevitably there is pain that follows.  The pain of knowing that people aren't who you think you are.  It really does make you feel as if you've been wearing the rose colored glasses as of late.  That's never a particularly happy thing, the rose colored glasses, and so...  At least I know now and I think I'm able to better identify these people.  It doesn't make it any less sad, however.