Watching Birds Fly

I keep noticing this one thing I keep saying. I keep talking about my friends and saying "we're not actually that close" or "I don't know them that well". It always feels weird, but true but false at the same time. It just occured to me this afternoon, after saying I wasn't very close to someone, that maybe I should rethink the way I define my relationships.

I mean, really, how DO you define how close or tight or good a friendship is? You could go by time spent or time known or commonalities or similarities or how much you like what you do with them or how much you like doing anything with them or how much you like them in general. I think that's weird, that there are so many different things that you can decide are important for a relationship to be "close"... and how actually rather arbitrary these things are. I can spend lots of time with someone and therefore decide we're "close" but not really know them that well or not actually get along with them deep down. On the other hand I can spend hardly any time with someone and feel drawn to them and feel a great similarity and comradery with them. So closeness in relationships can't really be broken down into reasons or steps or categories. It's all random.

So can I really say things like that, "we're not actually that close" while being fair? I keep experiencing these very profound relationships with wonderful people. But these people are people I don't know a lot about when it comes down to it. People who know nearly nothing about my secrets. But people who I feel a deep connection to.

I think maybe I have too high standards for "closeness". I only think I'm "close" to someone if I know most of their secrets and spend copious amounts of time with them... but that's not very realistic. Or IS it?? Is that the way relationship SHOULD be?

One issue here is that I do have a strong tendancy to attach my heart to people. It's kinda silly and kinda bad and kinda super awesome. I give my love away very freely... in a good way.

But then I come to a point of reflecting on my relationships and say, well... these friendships are the most valuable to me and these other ones are less valuable to me but this doesn't match up with time spent or history known or anything. It's kinda frustrating, kinda maddening and kinda cool. I don't know if this is pretty normal or super screwed up. Anyhow, thought I'd throw it out there in any case.

Micha

Labels: relationships