Friends

This week has been a little bit hard for me, and maybe the best week of my life. They say that when you begin to get healthy, it is common to lose all of your unhealthy friends. I suppose just making my family my priority chased off all of my drinking buddies, which I expected, but what I didn’t see coming was the departure of some of my closest friends.

It makes sense though. They say that the only people who will be mad about you having boundaries are the people who were benefiting from you not having any.  And so it goes. As I refuse to be controlled by anger and guilt any longer, and choose to speak up when I’m not happy, I choose to walk away from some people, and some choose to walk away from me. 

Some of my friends took it in stride, embraced the new me... others became upset that I wasn’t caregiving anymore, others got upset that I no longer respond to guilt. I lost a few friends because of my new standards, but the friends who stuck around feel closer. 

It’s garbage day, and I’m throwing away the one-sided friendships, the guilt trippers, the ones who see me putting my kids first and argue. There is only one explanation for that, and it’s that they feel I should be putting them first. I’m grateful for my friends who accept and love this more selfish version of me, and as much as I’ll miss the friends who want to be the only selfish one in our relationship, I think I’m better off.