friend. not been a good one.

I don't feel like a good friend a lot of the time. Or maybe it's that I don't feel like I'm the friend I want to be or should be. I love people (most of the time). I love helping people, feeling like I've done something to make their life better. Guess that's why I went into a helping profession, even though I've not done anything with it for several years. But when I had kids, that became a whole other story. Well, maybe even before that.

I am a very emotional person. On so many levels. I choose to care about other people's emotions and thoughts just as much as my own. And with such, well I hate to be a bother to people. I hate to call someone (or text) and say "Hey wanna hang out?" because I don't want to bother people. So I just wait, thinking that maybe someone will contact me when they want to hang out. But you know what, that rarely happens. Not the fault of the other person, it's just what happens.

This whole thing of feeling like I'm bothering people has evolved more so with the kids because now it's "Well the kids are crazy sometimes, and don't listen, and I just don't want to bother anyone with that." So I isolate us. Not good. Not good for the kids. D at least goes to preschool for 3 hours a day, and we have church a couple of times a week when he gets to see kids, but church right now is the only place A gets a lot of her socialization. And it's the only place I get a lot of it too.

How do I overcome this feeling of "Well I don't want to bother you, I'll just wait till you want to hang out with me?"

I feel like I've lost a lot of friendships because of this over the past few years. I know lots of people in the area, but don't ever see them. And it's sad. Because the people I know are awesome people and I would love to see them and hang with them and let our kids spend time together and all develop the friendships that we had started to have, but I let stop because of stupid feelings.

 The whole feeling of bothering people can totally been seen rooted in my other issue of depression. I'm not afraid anymore of talking about my depression. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's something I've dealt with for more than half my life, and I've finally started to accept it and I'm working on it. Starting to get the help that I need. And with that hopefully I will be able to get back the friendships that I really want and our family could use, so that we can grow to be healthier, happier people.

So yea, there it is. I've been feeling like a bother and haven't wanted to bother people so I didn't. But when you, hopefully, start seeing the improvements, hopefully you'll start seeing us too.