Enigma's Blog

  I have a friend who is getting married soon.  He's a great guy, extremely funny, but I think he suffers from poor self esteem.  He has been seeing his girlfriend for a few years now and decided to ask her to marry him.  I worry a little though because I know that she has her own personal, emotional, and psychological issues.  She suffers from poor self esteem too.  Sometimes she takes it out on him, and all of us friends know it.  For some reason she thinks that his friends don't like her, and so she makes up her mind not to like them.  Anytime he hangs out with his friends, he feels like he has to choose between her or them because she gets upset when he does.

  Of course this is really just a side story.  What's on my mind is determining where your loyalties lie.  To be frank, I don't know why you would have to choose one or the other, either friends or companion, why they would be at such odds, but it's a complicated world.  On one hand you are important enough to someone that they would want to spend exclusive time with you.  On the other hand you have friends who you also care about, even if your companion and your friends do not quite get along.

  I believe that the people in our lives reflect parts of who we are, so it is interesting to look at the situation in which you see a clear divide among the people you care about most.  I'm a friendly and caring person, and I meet new people every day.  I don't know why but for some reason some people are drawn to me.  Like I can do anything about that.  It's funny though because he once held that against me, that people flocked to me.  I was confused and shocked.  Why would he be upset that people were attracted to me?  And what did I have to do with them being attracted to me?  It's not like I forced them to or did anything to mislead them. 

  Is it a terrible thing that people are attracted to others?  I suppose he would argue that he should be the only one who feels for me the way he does.  But the very reasons he was attracted to me in the first place are probably the reasons other people are attracted as well.  And he doesn't like that.  My understanding is that it's because he's afraid that I might fall for someone else as hard as I fell for him.  No one understands better than I that that will not happen.  That, and his determination to protect me from the world. 

  The truth is I'm afraid of making new friends.  I'm afraid because I believe that that is one more person he suspects would replace him in my life.  No one can fill his shoes in my heart, and no one else will.  So I try to do things on my own, and I'll hang out with a friend or two, but not for any extended amount of time.  If any of them comes on a little strong, I will let them know that I'm strongly spoken for.  When I say that, I do mean him. 

  I wish I could comfort him, ease his troubled mind, love him incredibly the way I love him.  I know that some of these thoughts are just his active imagination gone wild, but it's like what I was talking about with imagination.  When you are left alone with your thoughts, they begin to decay.  Small things get magnified.  Good things vanish into the background.  All you do when you overthink is intensify your thoughts, whether they be worry or anger or bitterness.  But I know the toil is within him, and he must be the one to fight his demons.  I can't fight them for him no matter how much I want to.  I can only assure him that I will be wherever he needs me, where he wants me.  A year ago he said this to me, but I say it now to him, "My heart beats your name."