One thing throughout my life that has been a cycle, is keeping good friends close by and keeping the bad ones away. I never know whether it's just me and who I am or if it's because of how picky I am with how I want to be treated, but it's something I've tended to struggle with my whole life.
To put it all out there, I've had a countless amount of people talk bad about me behind my back and still claim to be a real friend to me, also friends that just decided to stop talking to me and I still don't know why to this day. Some days it eats up my mind because I never know what I've done to them to make them talk about me the way they have.
Me being someone that doesn't want to have problems with anyone, I of course want to clear the air when people say something bad about me. Also to the ones I dropped personally, I know I've explained my reasoning on why I decided to stop talking to them and it's nothing I wanted to start drama over, but it's still me being looked at as a bad person for doing something for the sake of me.
I know I have the couple of friends that have been here most of my life that are as busy as me, that have been great and I love them. But, I also have so called "friends" that haven't bothered to see how I've been for a while now unless something good happens to you. I never know how to feel with those types of people, it's just like "are you really my friend or have you been my friend?" or "are you just an acquaintance or something?" because it's just one of those things where it even makes you question things more. Like you just want to say to them, "thank you for noticing my accomplishments but where have you been before this?" or it's like "should I check in first on them next time or do I expect an effort from them next time too?" It's confusing. Seriously.
What a lot of people I think don't understand is that at the end of the day, you only have yourself. You have people that choose to support you and ones that don't. I've come to learn that the older you get, the more you have to go through things on your own and some people will just come and go. I know that I'll eventually end up finding people that are going to stay and that I'll know that I can have time to make more of an effort for the way they will for me but until they come I'll be working for myself until then.