A sip of Starrshine

Sometimes, I wish we could pick and choose the people want to be in our lives. 

How many times has it happened that you find yourself wishing that a friend of yours was closer, or that someone would take a hint and give you some space?

I find it frustrating when you’re trying to repair a relationship but the other person won’t put in that effort. No matter how much you try to apologize and grovel, a friendship (or any other non-familial relationship) is a mutual thing. It requires input from both sides. Talking to friends who struggle with this one-sidedness, and having struggled with it myself, makes me wish that we could just pick and choose.

One such example is the captain of the Quidditch team who has similar interests to me but of whom I just never see. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’d be best friends if he was more in my life. Ah, but it is not so, and we are not best friends because I see him about once a semester and our only interactions are through liking things on each other’s walls on Facebook. Every now and then.

I know there are a lot more serious examples. Exes that you want back in your life. Exes that you wish would realize there’s nothing more to the relationship and give up the facade of “I hope we can still be friends”. Friends that, through one party and/or another changing, became too distant. Friends that, through one party and/or another changing, you want more distance between the you.

Then again, we do have some power to choose who is in our lives. Often, we are too courteous to really make the demands.
But if we truly wanted, couldn’t we have only the people we wanted in our lives?
Couldn’t we completely ostracize and humiliate people we wanted to see less of?
Couldn’t we toss aside everything else and work to make sure that we saw the faces we did want to see?

Of course.
That’s not the world we live in, however.

Have you ever though about the people you wish were a bigger part of your life? And conversely, were a smaller part?

I have been eating so much Korean barbecue (aka “KBBQ”) these past few days that I think my craving from finals and before has been satiated. 

On Tuesday, I went to Shin Chon with some friends from school. This was special for 3 reasons:
1) Usually, we do our Shin Chon get-together shortly after fall semester ends, so the fact that this was after spring semester ended was pretty nice.
2) Grace was able to attend this time! She has had to go back to Hawaii soon after fall semester ends, so it was nice to have her with us this time around.
3) I was spending time with people after spring semester finals. Last year, I turned into a bit of a sociopath. (I didn’t blog about it, probably because I was ashamed, but it got really bad. Long story short, I did not even speak to anyone from school all summer except for my core group of friends that I do these KBBQ get-togethers with.)

Food was, as always, delicious at Shin Chon, but our service was a little grumpier than even their usual grump. I was surprised, since usually they’re not that snappy with us when we have Korean speakers with us, and we had 3 in our group. Oh well. Shin Chon remains the ruler against which I measure every other KBBQ place that I go to. When I write my reviews for them on Yelp, I am comparing them to Shin Chon. Usually, at other places the food isn’t as good but the wait staff is friendlier. ^^

Then we dilly-dallied at Lotte supermarket because Nicole and Grace needed to pick up some items. We had some fun in the Lil Thingamajigs store where they just have all these cute little Morning Glory and Sanrio cute things. You know what I’m talking about: adorable erasers, cute notebooks, Hello Kitty clocks, Doraemon totes, etc. One of those stores.

And then Wednesday, I met some people from Xanga!

Alex invited me down for some karaoking, and I am never one to say no to karaoke, especially considering how many solo karaoke parties I’ve been having in my room. Let’s just say, I’ve been desperate for some KTV/NRB (noraebang) time.

Unfortunately, I was very very late. Punctuality is so important to me, and I definitely didn’t apologize enough for being as late as I was. I had a late start heading out because I needed to get gas, and when I went to call Alex and tell him I was running a bit late… I realized I left my cell phone at home. <groan> Rushed back to the house to grab my phone and call Alex to tell him that I was running very late. Made good time until I hit rush hour traffic into Northern Virginia. Then I lost all the time and then some, resulting in me not getting to his house until 45 minutes later than I said I would be there.
Oops.

I met Sonlay and Ben at Alex’s gorgeous house (honestly, it’s so pretty, I wish I wasn’t all flustered when I finally pulled up to it and got to get a better look at it) and we headed out for adventures in Annandale.

First stop: Honeypig. I had heard a lot about Honeypig from Annandale aficionados. I haven’t been to the one in EC because I heard that a) the Annandale one was better and b) if you’re going to do KBBQ in EC then you might as well go to Shin Chon! Food was delicious, but I think the hype was a bit much. I was expecting something super-amazing-fantabulous and it was good, but again, next to my Shin Chon ruler, it wasn’t ah-mazing.

Second stop: Shilla Bakery. We had strawberry bingsoo there. Bingsoo is a Korean dessert that consists of shaved ice and ice cream! So ours was strawberry ice cream plus fresh strawberries PLUS mochi. (Apparently I stole all the mochi and none of the boys got any. Whoops!) Was quite tastyyy.

Third stop: Cafe Musé. We had an 8:30 appointment for fun and song! Alex loves picking songs man. How did I end up singing Fergie and the Pussycat Dolls? Noooooo clue. But we had a tambourine and good company. It was a fun time. I have been desperate for karaoke for so long, so this definitely hit the spot.

I had waaaaaay too much fun with everyone! I hope we get to hang out again soon.

Maybe I should start unpacking soon…..

I am addicted to one of my friendships. When I am being objective, I realize that it’s one of the more infuriating relationships I have. For the small bursts of pleasure, there is quite a bit of other stuff that I know isn’t enough to keep me happy.

There’s no real substance or foundation to this friendship. To me, it feels like this friendship has always been on one wobbly leg, and I’ve been spending the last 4 years just duct taping it all the time. It’s probably more duct tape than anything else to be honest. XD

I’ve never been good at cutting losses, but I know I have to.

My friend hasn’t done anything wrong, but is not really emotionally what I need from a friend in whom I invest so much of my energy and emotions. And it is unfair of me to demand more from this friend after 4 years.

So. How do I wean myself off this friendship? I feel a bit bad just trying to cut this friend out because no real harm has been actively done.
I’m just… tired of being addicted to a relationship that I put more energy into than I understand. It’s simply not very healthy. 

Two of my closest friends from my old high school in New Jersey called me within the past 2 weeks, and it’s so nice when they do, even though we don’t have a whole lot to talk about 5 years after I moved away.

To this day, I would probably still call at least one of them one of my closest guy friends.

Making guy friends got hard in high school, man. Before, all it took was me choosing kickball over hopscotch, or Super Smash over dolls.
Those were the days… 

I realized about 2 weeks ago that I needed to meet some new people. Last week, my fortune cookie seemed to agree.

After this weekend, I’m sure my fortune cookie is very satisfied.

Warning: Obnoxiously and obscenely long post ahead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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I don’t understand something about a few of my guy friends.

Why do they think that if I say something that maybe they don’t like, whether it makes them have to acknowledge that I have feelings they need to be more careful of or I call them out on something that I want them to stop doing, they can just pretend I never said it?

I said it for a reason.

And of all the things I say that you can choose to disregard, these are the things that you should not be ignoring. I say a lot of stupid things that don’t matter, yes.
But this matters.

Do not pretend I don’t have feelings invested.
Do not pretend like you don’t know what you’re doing.

A note to my friends:
If you respect me as a friend, then please respect the serious things I say to you. If it makes you uncomfortable or unhappy, feel free to let me know but don’t block out whatever it is I said to make you feel this way.