I Love You Ma'am

Silly title I know, but have you seen that movie "I love you Man" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsAu09O8Is)? Well it was funny and I can see how many men probably struggle with not having a real friend who is male. But then I got to thinking how women do the friend thing and while its totally different, its exactly the same. As women we are so quick to make friends (who can't say women don't have like a zillion acquaintances??) but when it comes to like deep down true friends we get a little weird. Its like crossing some weird bridge that looks scary but on the other side its Disneyland.
But for some reason we are too scared to cross the bridge to Disneyland because we've been burned, broken, talked bad about, traumatized or just plain tired of lame friendships.

I'll admit that one day a few months ago I woke up and said, "I need to go out on a Girl date! Its time to stop being scared and make a friend."
So I did. I just sent a Facebook message to a gal who I met thru someone at work and asked if she wanted to go and talk. And we talked for like 3 hours at Jamba Juice that night. IT was good! I'm sure she has a million close friends, but we both walked away saying, "this was good for our girlie souls."

But then there are the people you do let yourself open up too just a little bit to sort of see how they'll do and it doesn't work out. But you can't help but feel sad and you keep hoping she'll change...and of course it doesn't. Those are the friendships that are hard to let go of sometimes. I wish I could see how someone will be right away -- especially around other girls -- but that's not going to happen. Boo.

Work friends are the hardest ones to get to know. Well, let me rephrase that, they are the easiest to get to know, but its so surface for SO long it drives you crazy. And when you do start opening up to them it can get either all weird and awkward or good and bloom into something cool. I haven't had a lot of the "bloom into something cool" friendships from work. But MAN I can't even count how many of the "let's be surface friends" I've had from work relationships. And sometimes you get that person that is SO open with their private personal lives that it scares you. Yeah, I don't usually let those people into my own personal life. They are usually too busy sharing their personal lives anyway. I know you know that person! We've all met them.

My current job I'll admit to not sharing a lot of my personal life this time around. I don't know why. I've just been very quiet about it and I like it that way. Sure it doesn't leave a lot of room for people to get ot know ALL of me, but that's ok. I've been there over a year now and I've come to realize these are not the people who I'm going to be BFF's with for life. For me not sharing all my life or personal struggles right now makes it easier to leave a job. My last job was like gut-wrenching hard to leave because we all knew so much about each other and our families....I still get homesick for some of those relationships again.
For example, my grandpa died last week. Suddenly considering he only fell and hurt himself, but too soon considering he was only in his 80's. No one except for my manager and my HR manager knows this. Ironically one of the girls in my department her boyfriends uncle died around the same time and she's talked quite a bit about it. And then another gal her husbands grandma passed away. So I had an opportunity to join in our "someone died in our lives" discussion but it would have been so forced for me. It would have meant opening up and exposing part of my life.
Which is NOT a bad thing at all and I wondered why I didn't say anything because I swear I'm trying to not be such a vault, but I just didn't feel like some people needed to know about that part of my life.
How do I explain that my Grandpa never paid attention to me or my brother? That we were his ONLY grandchildren yet he favored 2 other girls who were not even related to us. He even had the nerve to hang their pictures around his house.....it was hard to know that you weren't exactly liked as well as those girls at such an early age?
And why was it easier to say this on my blog and not to people directly?
Because I don't feel like some of my co-workers are sincere enough when it comes to me and my life. because I'm so much older ( no joke I'm at least 7+ years older then most of my team at work and it feels like DECADE sometimes) and I've "lived" my life so much more then them (think jobs, house, kids, marriage) its like I live in another world to them.
Do I think my blog people are more sincere?
Well no.
Just writing this feels like journaling and its refreshing to just say it and that's that.

Telling something to a person face to face gets a different reaction.

So maybe I should go back to I love you Man.
I need to go on more Girl dates. Just like the premise of that Movie.
No I won't be taking out the girls from work anytime soon, but I have gone out with them. Only to quickly determine I'm not their type. Seriously! I'm not "that girl" that goes out and parties and drinks to get drunk or likes to be all flirty and crazy just because. Ok they are all not like that, but you get what I mean.

So here's to girl dates in 2010. Putting myself out there is scary, but at the same time its good to grow. To figure out what I do want in a friend and what I don't. Just like he did in the movie.