It's Not That Deep

And then he said, "If it's not important, I just don't archive it."

Stunned, I sat quietly. Just 24 hours prior, I had spilled my guts, my innermost thoughts, and one of the most precious untold stories of my life to him and he failed to "archive" it. He neglected to commit it all to memory because, I suppose, it was not important.

Desperation and loneliness opens us to vulnerabilities we might have better avoided when feeling more secure. It causes us to reach out to people who might not have our best interests in mind or who honestly just don't care. And I was desperate and feeling lonely, missing my dearest friends who weren't around. I was desperate for my friendship with him to be more than just seeing each other quarterly and joking over texts and phone calls once every other month when we talked as if we were besties but... it really wasn't that deep.

Our relationship lived on the surface. After pondering for a while, I realized I didn't know what his favorite food was or if he ever had a dog or where he would travel if he could go anywhere in the world. I didn't know if he preferred Target or Walmart or how often he went grocery shopping. I didn't know if he could cook or why he really broke up with his last girlfriend because the stories were vague and full of his made up cliches that I, quite frankly, didn't even really understand.

There was a time when we were seemingly close, hanging out all of the time, and I thought, maybe we would be friends. Maybe we would eventually be more. Maybe not. But it was fun and stress free and no strings attached. Oh my God... It was fun and stress free and no strings attached.

We must be aware of what others have to offer and we have to decide if that is enough before we spill out the serious and stressful details of our life only to discover that it's not important enough to archive. Because if we don't, we might set the bar of expectations for everyone as high as we do for our best friend or our lover or even ourselves. And that leads to disappointment which is the last thing you need to pile onto a desperate, lonely day.