living with a discombobulated mind

i don’t know about you, but i consider my list of close friends to be small; easily fitting on one hand or less than one finger, depending on how tight i make my definition. there has been a considerable development this past week and i need to talk.

first, i reached out to a new person in one of my support groups.  for how she “carried herself” in the meetings, she seemed to be a good person with a kind heart and hoped that to be true. in talking to her, i told her that i thought she would be good to my support structure and she obliged. we exchanged email and phone information.

at first, i started slowly; i didn’t want to blow her out of the water before she even left the harbor. after a few of days of being incommunicado, she checked in with me. i asked her about how much was too much. she answered with a generous boundary; i do try to stay a couple of steps back from that line. i am quickly finding it easy to call her friend.

there are two other friend instances. unlike the first one, this expression of friendships turned toward me.

i helped someone i knew last week. i consider her a  friend but not a close friend because of her upbringing, she seems to keep people at a distance, fearful of getting close. she had a particularly bad week and i supported her the best i could. in a meeting that followed, she shared that she doesn’t reach out to someone unless they seem  to care and that she  can trust. i smiled and sloughed it off. a short while later it came to me; if she only seeks support from people who care and who she trust, and she reached out to me for support, that must mean that she considers me worthy of trust and also carrying. that gave me some joy given in an esteemed position of someone i consider friend.

last night, a friend texted me in a panic; she got notice from amazon that her name and password had been found on the internet and the combo matched her amazon password. a quick search shows that to be true. like too many people, she used that amazon password for just about all her logins.

she wanted some help getting set up with a password manager. she inquired on how to make a long and memorable password. i told her to ditch the idea of passwords and use passphrases instead. i threw out a couple of examples one being, “blah was my best friend,” and she could insert the name of a childhood friend. she changed the “was” to “is”. she made statements like, “you know who that is, “i don’t care if you know my password, “of course your my best friend. who do i call in times of trouble?” wow. not only does someone consider me a friend, they consider me a best friend. i was taken aback.

the next morning, i reflected on the events of the last week and felt a warmness come over me. then, the discombobulated mind kicked into gear. oh my gawd, this feels like such a great burden. what if i don’t do it right? what if i screw up? what if i can’t handle everything that comes their way? suddenly and quite rudely, mind you, the fear and anxiety took up residence in my gut. how can three warm and heart-touching events, incredibly falling  in the same week, become a burden that seems impossible to carry?

i really want a mind that doesn’t make an instantaneous 180-degree turn while traveling at 60 mph. it really creates some mind-bending, gut-wrenching, and totally uncomfortable situations for me.