Intervention

Friends are important. Loyal friends are important. But I'm willing to argue that friends who are unafraid to confront you when they think you are being an idiot are the most important.

See, confrontation is something that people shy away from oh-so often. Political correctness and fear of offending people have made this a norm. No one wants to make anyone else feel uncomfortable, no one wants to hurt anyone else's feelings. This all leads to silence and rooms stuffed wall-to-wall with elephants and friendships that aren't much deeper than a kiddy pool.

Bite me if this offends you, but you can't call yourself a real friend unless you are willing to call others out on their bull crap.

Friends are here to help each other stretch and grow, to help each other become the greatest and purest versions of themselves. Sometimes this is rough. But always it is worth it.

And cue the intervention.

These past few weeks have not been the best in the world. I was pretty deeply backstabbed by someone who I trusted with a lot of my life. This led to anger and bitterness on my part, making friends with slightly questionable people in addition to those who serve as my big brothers and sisters who were growing more and more concerned with my apparent dancing carelessly on the edge of the deep end, jokingly threatening to do a cannonball.

Apparently, you cannot joke about doing stupid things in the presence of people who actually care about you without getting sat down on a Saturday night with a bowl of pasta in your hand and concerned looks in everyone's eyes. I had been invited to the apartment a few days ago under the assumption that I would just be fifth-wheelin' for two of my favorite couples:

Dan and Hayley

and Robby and Laura.

Hah. Nope.

So I walk into the apartment and almost nobody is talking (which, let me tell you, is incredibly out of character for these people). Hayley asks me if I want food and I take a bowl and take a seat and laughingly ask if this is an intervention.

"Well . . ."

"Oh my gosh it is an intervention! You guys . . ."

"Just a small 'i' intervention . . ."

I let out a dramatic sigh, with legitimately no idea where this is going. I couldn't have guessed even if I tried.

They went on to talk about how I haven't been acting like myself recently, how I've been harboring anger and living life flippantly. The whole, "We know you haven't actually made any bad decisions but we just want to make sure you don't," thing came up a bit. Every other sentence had something to do with how much they love me.

On one hand it was decently overwhelming. On the other it was a slap in the face. And on the other hand of this three-handed monstrosity, it was ridiculously relieving to know that not everyone is just going to bail. These people actually intend to stick around.

Laura turned to me at one point in her incredibly Laura-esque way and talked about how much they
really do.

"I know you don't believe me because you've had so many people just come and leave but we're not going anywhere. You could go do a ton of drugs or get pregnant and we would still stick around. You matter to us and you have so much power and so much life and we just want you to understand that."

The rest of our time consisted of me reassuring everyone that I don't plan on going psycho, and everyone stating that they knew, they just wanted to be safe.

At the time, I wasn't entirely sure how I was taking the whole thing. Truth is, I don't always believe that the people in my life want to and will stay in it. Mostly because so many have made that claim and failed to follow through. I have these crazy rejection issues and abandonment issues and I don't really trust anyone.

But they make me want to. And anyone who knows me at all can vouch for what a big deal that is.

See, my tendency when I get hurt is to pull away and put up walls in an attempt to guard myself from it ever happening again. But I'm beginning to understand that I don't have to run away. Why would I if I can just run to the ones who have always had my back?

It's a learning process. I need to coach my brain to be okay with trusting people. But with people like the ones that I have, I don't think it will be all that difficult.