I hadn't really thought about how much I'm going to miss my friends until last night. Jim started talking about what our life group is going to start doing in the month of September, and the whole time he was talking about this amazing, community building, life changing, intimate friendship creating idea, all I could think was "and I won't be here for it." Everyone will be building life-long relationships in this amazingly tight community without me. No biggie, it's not like I've ever had it before, so I won't miss it. It seems like that's all I'm fated to have--no close relationships, no life-long comrades for me, no best friend. I'm tired of buying into that cynical lie, but it feels like that's all that I'm slated for. I feel like just checking out, wean myself out of their lives so that this won't hurt so bad. I just met these people less than a year ago, and I just started opening up to them only two months ago after quest. But I still feel like I don't know them at all, and that I'm not all that important to them. I know, I know...I could be the one to make an effort and call people to hang out. But it's so intimidating to do, especially when I feel like I don't do anything but trip my way through an attempt at conversation; why should I initiate it when I'll just go through the whole thing wishing the ground would swallow me up or I could magically be given a ready wit and a gift for gab. I would love to be acknowledged by even just a phone call from someone wanting to hang out, or by a group of people going out for pizza and realizing that it would be so much fun if I was there. sounds a little self-righteous, but the alternative to daydreaming is instead believing that they don't call me so I must not be important. I wish I could pick my thoughts up out of this darkness and actually look at the possitive side of all this. I have had the amazing opportunity to know people and be known. I have at this moment more friends than I've had in my whole life combined. I have friends like Greg, Scott, and Josh who give great hugs every time they see me (and sometimes a girl just needs a guy hug). I have friends like Lauren and Caitlin who I can have fun with. I have friends like Amy who I can really talk with, about the deep heart issues as well as the surface ones that are vital to a woman's heart but that no one's ever cared to talk through with me before. I have friends like Jim who is always there to give advice and be an older brother who's promised to protect and fight for my heart and believes in the wild woman that God has created me to be. I have friends like Jason who sees me cowering in the corner and actually thinks I'm worth fighting for enough to come into the corner and pull me out, when no one else ever has before. I have friends. My Abba has been so, so very good to me as to give me friends, even if only for this short while. and He has seen that it will be good for me to leave them, for a time. So I can focus on how much it hurts to leave, or I can focus on the fact that my Abba knows what He's doing and trust that everything will turn out ok, if not better than it is now. But it is still such a fight to look at the possitive and be grateful instead of believing the cynical lies about myself. I've done that my whole life, it's hard to think that anyone would actually want me.