I wouldn't change my life for anything. Steve makes me feel so loved. But this week, and the last few weeks I have felt a little rejected by the outside world. I say I have "felt" because I know to some extent or maybe a huge extent that this is based on emotion.
I am usually pretty confident that people like me, or at least don't mind me. I am pretty pleasant person.
I know to some extent the loneliness I feel is my own fault. I am so busy with my own little world, and taking care of steve, and my job, and my pets, and my house, etc., that I don't exert the energy to make my relationships with my friends as strong as maybe they were before I married steve. Steve himself, is a bit of a loner, and doesn't mind just hanging out the two of us most of the time.
Maybe it started a couple of weeks ago when I decided to reach out to a friend that I had in highschool. We had a falling out....more than that, our worlds were changing and we didn't want to accomodate those changes for/to each other. She was a year younger still in highschool, and I was beginning college. ....lots of reasons.
A few weeks ago I wrote to her on myspace. I have seen her several times in the last few years, and we are always polite. Her family is absolutely great to me. I kept a friendship with them several years after the one with her dissolved....so I leave a comment for everyone to see.
(another friend had found her and left a comment, and she responded immediately by leaving a comment, and using language that sounded bubbly, and excited to hear from her). Several days later, I receive a very polite message.....not comment...a message...that no one else can see. Maybe she wrote it this way so she could write more....maybe there is a perfectly good reason, but it seemed a little distant.....still I wrote back....bubbling about the things she said....saying I would help her out with if she needed anything in planning her wedding...seeing as I just went through it and have lots of stuff....and I never heard from her again. Not even a thanks. or I will keep that in mind.
So I start thinking that perhaps I am too pushy. Perhaps people don't like me as much as I think they do. Perhaps I am not friendly.

Another case in point. This week I sent an email out to some people at church asking them to go to starbucks on thursday night. I did my normal thing and probably included to many ideas in the one email....I said maybe we could start a book club, and then told them about some of the projects I am invovled in Choctaw, and with Invisible Children, and asked for their ideas and prayers. So I get an email from one girl who asked me if me and MY husband (she used the caps there) had taken over the sunday school class. Then when I see another one of our friends he asks what have I been bugging everyone about?....and I told him that maybe I have been pushy or something, and he said oh well. You and then he mentioned another guy, that we all think of as pushy. I know he was just kidding, but I just wonder if I really am. I wonder if maybe I am as annoying as some other people......
I am just being sensitive, but when I seem to be close to almost absolutely no one (except my husband of course....but i need girlfriends too!) then I guess I start getting sensitive.

I don't feel like I am any different. I am always pushing my ideas on people, or throwing them out there and seeing what they think. I am always reaching out even when I seem to get my neck chopped off and no one is reaching out to me. But usually I have people who at least in some fashion want to be around me. Or maybe before I have just looked needy enough that people decided they had to do something for me. Who knows. Anyway. I know I will get over this....probably within hours....but for right now.

p.s. I am creating relationships with new people, and probably creating a new friend circle for myself through that....but I don't feel like I am clicking. Of course, I don't click easily or fast. And perhaps I am just in this transition period that will smooth itself out. I remember the friends that I spent almost all my time with for the last few years.......I probably hung out a year with them before I really felt comfortable.....so it is more me, than anything else....i am sure of it.