Day #38: My Therapists

When it comes to friends, everyone fulfills a need.

Trevor is the friend I call when I need to do a deep dissection of Buffy's sixth season.
Julienne is the friend I call when I need to hear a good story.
Andrew is the friend I call when I need to be told I'm acting like a fool.

Actually, almost all my friends are good for that last one.

Luckily for me, most of the people in my life are willing to play therapist.

I say 'luckily for me' because I'm not always sure it's lucky for them.

I try to spread out the bitching evenly throughout all of them, but some of them definitely hear more than their share.

My friend Leann has been woken up by me at 2am on many a night simply because I was still upset about something that had happened to me twelve hours earlier.

Sometimes my friend Fallon gets to hear me vent for fifteen minutes only to have me hang up immediately when I'm done because my break is over.

In other words, sometimes I can be a pretty lousy friend.

One of the things this project has done for me is to remind me that my friends are not there to be my therapists. Yes, they can be very therapeutic, and that's wonderful, but they have their own stuff to deal with, and if I'm not there for that, I can't ask them to be their for my nonsense.

Now of course, in a crisis, there might need to be more attention.

But let's be honest, how many disasters do all of us actually go through in a week?

When I was in college, I went through a phase where boys became more important than anything else. Now, I feel like theater has taken over that spot, and though it's definitely a more productive addiction, it certainly doesn't make it okay for me to demote my friends on the priority list.

So, I'm buying a planner and fitting friend time in--

--And not just fifteen minutes.