Boys vs. Girls

For anyone that knows me very well, you know that I see things in life as very black and white. I know, there are a million shades of grey in our world, as there should be, but for me I like to bottom line things as much as possible. My best girl friends know all too well that I particularly like to black and white things when it comes to guys. He didn’t text you back? He doesn’t like you. He doesn’t want to meet your family? He doesn’t like you. He only calls you after 10pm or 4 beers? He doesn’t like you. AND even MORE importantly, he doesn’t text you back, he doesn’t want to meet your fam, he only calls late at night after drinking…BE DONE! You deserve better. Do not give the time of day to someone who doesn’t treat you absolutely ridiculously amazing. Period. If you do, then you are pathetic and desperate and clearly are not even remotely ready to make someone else happy let alone yourself. There it is.

So, while I sit on my high horse and preach my black and white religion to all my girl friends and even to myself when I was dating, I have seemed to miss an important point. I find it unacceptable for boys to treat me or my girl friends remotely subpar, but I have allowed my girlfriends to treat me subpar. A recent conversation had my friend shoving, thankfully, my black and white mindset right back into my face saying: it's not that black and white with your girlfriends. After a moment of thought, I replied: maybe it should be. It got me thinking…

Why do I let ANYONE treat me in any way I am not happy with? That doesn’t seem to mesh well with my whole black and white scheme I have going. Why do I feel like I should give chance after chance to someone I am close with when I wouldn’t give it to others I barely know? Shouldn’t the people who I am “close with” treat me BETTER than someone I hardly know since they should care about me? They should want to treat me as best they can since, in theory, they are my friend. So, why am I continuing to let a friend treat me poorly when I would never tolerate such behavior from a stranger? I don’t know.

Maybe, I give more chances to friends because we have history. We share memories. We have cried together in hardship and laughed through life when it seemed ever so hard. Maybe I give more chances because I remember those great times and I want them back again so badly it hurts. I hold onto the hope of old times being reincarnated into something new and different and maybe even wonderful.

My point is this: how long do you let a friend treat you poorly before you lose all hope and just move on? Can you really ever do that? Or because you share this history, this lifetime, do you hold onto hope that one day you might be able to grab a bagel one morning like old times?

I guess it comes down to that hope. Hope is a funny thing. I think hope is something I cannot control. It is there and then one day it isn’t. So maybe the answer is this: You hold on tight to that hope as long as you can and then one day that hope is just gone. And then maybe it won’t hurt. Maybe then you won’t be sad. Maybe losing hope doesn’t have to be a loss at all. Maybe losing hope creates a new beginning.