Tonight I had a conversation with my friend Beaner.  Although she has had some contention about whether I’m really “her” friend, as opposed to her boyfriend’s friend, I consider her to be “my” friend.

The conversation revolved around the difference between being alone vs. being lonely.  The difference to me is pretty astute.  While they are both empty feelings that sit heavily on your chest, rob moments of peace from your sleep, and cause a sense of desperation from within… one is an absolute and the other is an abstract.  The fact is though, that it is easy to confuse the two.

I’ve admitted things to her that I haven’t admitted to anyone, except all of you… such as the fact that I feel as if people look at me as if I am damaged.  One of the reasons this is hard to admit, is because I felt she was one of the people who looked at me that way.  What I found out was that she often feels the same way, albeit for entirely different reasons.

So yes… I know I probably shouldn’t have… but I tried to fix her.  I tried to make her right… it is what I do.  Sadly, I have thus far been unable to do so.  She saddened me one day with something she said… what it was is unimportant… but it made me want to crawl under the covers and sleep away my own sense of loneliness.  I wanted to just be able to drop out for a little while… be invisible… and I did that.  I didn’t call her for over a week… I avoided her texts… I would go home and go to bed and avoid the phone calls… because essentially I had given up on saving the cheerleader.  I was a failure.

Of course, how I view things is different then how others view them.  I place the expectations of being able to save the world on myself.  I place the expectation on fixing things upon myself.  I am the instrument of my own agony by never living up to my own standards.  I am not legend… I am human… yet I often forget to remind myself of that.