where to begin?

Saying it's been a while is an understatement. I never thought I'd go more than a year without blogging. It's such great therapy for me to put all the craziness in my life in a post that I'm not sure why I lost my voice. I could blame it on having a job that isn't my dream, night shift, failed relationships, etc., etc., but maybe I just needed a break. Writing about work helps me process some of the horrible and ridiculous things I see at work, but did I let blogging take the place of actually talking to another human being?

In that regard, I've been trying to be better about keeping in touch, which is a struggle most days. Over the past few years, I feel like I've slowly disengaged. At first I blamed night shift for isolating me from the rest of the world, but I realize now that I made some poor choices along the way. Some days it's just easier to hide out in my house and not deal with the world. If you have my number, then you know I rarely answer my phone. I'll text or tweet, but I'm pretty non-committal after that. Still not sure how I got to this point, but here I am, trying to fix my mistakes.

I worry that I've ruined relationships I've had for years. Ruined is kind of a strong word, I guess taken-for-granted might be a better way to explain it. When I do decide to reach out, I fully expect that nothing has changed, and life just goes on. P.S. excuse my absence from your life. Interesting approach, right? Even better, I have no valid reason for being incommunicado. It's almost like I let it get so bad, that it's easier to keep ignoring it. Everyday there are people I could call, but for whatever reason, I just don't.

With all that said, I almost feel worse for admitting it. But acknowledgement is half the battle, right? Will I call anyone today? Probably not, but you never know. It's just so hard when I feel like we have nothing in common anymore. How do we transition our relationship from what it was to one that includes husbands & kids without me feeling like the odd one out? Maybe it's just me being insecure, and I need to get over myself.

A lot of my apprehension stems from being used by a former friend to lie to her husband. The 3 of us went to high school together, and we'd all known each other for forever, but she fully expected that our friendship would trump both my morale code and my friendship with her husband. In the end, she's still married, probably still telling lies, and I'm out 2 friends. Do I think it was a healthy friendship? Not exactly, but it's hard to dismiss it when there's such a history. Walking away was and still is hard. We live in the same town, and I'm amazed that in 3 years we've never run into each other. How weird is that? Not sure what I'd say if we did run into each other. Sad how one relationship can affect so many others, intentional or not.

So that's where I'm at, still trying to figure out life, and failing on so many levels.