Perspectives

It's amazing to me how different people can have such different perspectives on the same things.  All through my life others have tried to push me in the direction of making the decisions they thought best for me.  When i was small it was family members and sometimes teachers.  As i grew it became friends and colleagues.  Yet two things have held true over the years.  

The first is that i ultimately tend to do what i believe i should.  i do consider advice and input and pertinent information but there's usually a part of my gut that relentlessly steers me where i am to go.  It doesn't necessarily steer me down the easiest path or the most mainstream one but i do believe it's the one meant for me, the one on which i belong.  It's not as much a matter of weighing evidence as knowing which way i feel i should be headed.

The second is that i surround myself with the people who are going to support my choices.  For better or worse they are mine to make and i'm not going to waste effort in justifying or explaining myself to people over and over again.  There are very few people in my life i believe are even entitled to such explanation and, of those, most either don't need one or don't feel any better having received one anyhow.  

i said goodbye to a friend today because he refuses to support the path i am following.  i have explained it to him and tolerated more intrusion on his part that i would have from most people, recognizing that his intentions are to help me.  i have also told him point blank several times that i heard his protests and don't welcome more.  i thought he had understood and agreed to try to be a friend and not inflict his ideas upon me any longer.

Today at work, i was intermittently in tears.  i was so upset about Master being mad at me and confused about exactly what happened last night.  The ironic thing is that, had my friend actually stopped being so damn judgmental, i probably would have felt safe enough to share some of my fears with him.

Instead he texted me repeatedly about what he considers acceptable options of life changes i can make with his approval.  Who the hell does he think he is?  i'd have a hard time naming a handful of people who express more dissatisfaction with their own lives than he does with his.  He even said recently that his reticence at my new path was in part due to his own jealousy.  Why should what he thinks i should do outweigh what i think?  Why should i give more credence to his opinions than my own?  

i'm hurt and frustrated by his actions.  i'd never treat him or another friend with such pompous disregard for their own choices.  i can't count the number of times i've offered a friend input then backed off to support what i expected to be a disastrous decision.  Often it was and i was there to pick up the pieces.  Sometimes i was wrong and didn't realize it until afterwards.  Either way, my role as friend was not to dictate action but to support it.  i am disappointed that he can't or won't or doesn't see things this way.  

i don't know when he and i became friends but it has to have been at least eight or nine years ago.  This is the first time i really feel disappointed in him.  i'm not angry at him, just sad that he's not letting there be a role for him in the path my life is going to follow.  That he can't see i have every right to make my own mistakes, even if that is what i am doing, is so much less than i would have expected of him and so much less than i feel i have given of myself to him.  

i know that moving to Master will result in the severing of some ties and the erecting of some boundaries i likely wouldn't have had to deal with otherwise.  i'm prepared for that.  i just hadn't expected this particular friendship to be one of them and maybe that's why i'm finding it as painful as i am.  It hurts that his agenda for me trumps my own and, in his mind, gives him grounds to act as he has been.  There was no choice to make.  It was a no brainer.  i told him that i don't want to hear from him and to leave me alone.  

To end on a positive note, i've connected with many new people lately and they do accept me.  They don't all share gor or slavery or any one commonality necessarily but my support system is expanding and there are people in my life who will hear me and know where it is coming from.  They will tell me when i'm full of shit but they will let me be so if that's the direction i need to take.  They will support my victories or pick me up if i get knocked on my ass.  

Thanks to Master, i've gotten better at letting the newest of them in.  i still have a long way to go but i am grateful for the progress.  i have more people i would call true friends today than i have in a long time, maybe ever.  i know i have a long way to go in terms of letting them get close and reciprocate the caring i give them but i also know that no friendship is ever going to involve anyone undermining my own decisions in favor of theirs.  So it is with sorrow but not regret that i leave behind someone i used to call my friend.