derelict daydreams

I've been thinking a lot about friendship and relationships and what those sort of things mean to me. I think I'm growing as a person, but at the same time I'm in a state in which I think I'm becoming more of the person that I always imagined I would be. This is a good thing of course, but it's also confusing and takes a toll on my heart sometimes.

I've been thinking about the people I love and wondering where our paths are going to take us.
It's weird when you have the strongest friendships with people who you only see once or twice a month, if that. Where we stand now, it's easy for us to fall back into our friendship patterns, but I wonder how it will be down the road. Right now Jeff can afford to drive down to Athens on a weekend so we can get stoned and watch Invader Zim, but he's on the road to starting a family, and so that scenario will get less and less likely as the years pass. Which is perfectly fine, because I hope the same is for me.
It's an example of friendship dynamics having to change. Jeff and I had a childhood friendship, a pre-teen awkward friendship, a high school friendship, a college drunken friendship, and now we're entering our adult friendship. If that means seeing each other at awkwardly formal dinner parties (as I assume it will since I've been watching a lot of Desperate Housewives lately) that's fine with me,
Other friendships though...I wonder if they'll ever evolve past the high school stage. Of course, one prime example is Rebecca. I'm not even going to go into all that though.
There's also the friends who, I have found out from third party sources, accept me to my face and say phobic things behind my back. Which is pretty cute, but I'm over it.

Friendships change dynamics.
that's what I keep coming back to. And the fact that it's okay. I'm not the frightened, suicidal, timid girl that I was. I'm something else entirely now.
I think about all the people who kept me alive over the years, and I mean that quite literally. I think about them and I wonder if I will, with my life, make up for the strain I have put on people. I hope that I can. Particularly my family. I'm going to put them through more in the coming years, I know. And maybe that is selfish. Maybe that is me saying, despite all you've done for me, I'm going to destroy the daughter and sister you fought to save anyway.
But I'm still going to be here. And I think that's what I've come to the past couple months. All of the hatred and self-loathing and self mutilation and feeling wrong even when everyone told me I was fine and I was a good person, all of that was me trying to break out of the shell that everyone saw. The shell I never really was.
I used to write about a monster deep inside me trying to break out but now I know that wasn't a monster. It was just me.
I've completely gone off target.
Sometimes I look in the mirror now and I don't have the surge of self-loathing. Sometimes I think I look good and I feel good and I'm just on the cusp of maybe loving myself. I think that's progress. I do.
I think I'm a good person, and I never thought I would get to that point. I'm going on a vastly different path than a lot of people, I am aware of this. But unlike a lot of things in my life, I know that even when I find out one of my closest friends in the world has been negative towards me because of this....it just rolls off my back. I just laugh. I forgive him.
which is definitely different.