I hope I've now had my last major battle with the friendship insecurity and loneliness issues I've been struggling with recently. Yes, I'll probably be lonely to some extent every minute that I walk this earth (as we all are, regardless of how many friends and loved ones, how close, etc.. We ARE, after all, seperated from God). However, I don't have to wallow in it or battle with it.

One friend that lives in Atlanta was up for the week. I had just seen her when I was visiting Atlanta, but that was the first time I'd seen her in over a year and a half, and she'd been my roommate for the first year I lived here.

Another friend that I haven't seen in almost a year was also in town, and the timing was mostly because of the first friends' visit. So the bunch of us (the two of them, some in-town friends, and myself) were all gonna get together Saturday night to hang out together and maybe watch a movie and eat dinner and whatnot. Just have a good time, like we did back in the day when the whole bunch of us lived in town.

I was babysitting all day Saturday, so I told them that I'd just come over when I got off, around 7:30 or 8. And that's what I did.

I arrived to find the apartment dark and locked. So I thought "gee, maybe they all went over to Thor and Angela's".

When I went there, the apartment was dark and locked, too. Thor was out with some of his other friends (having never been officially informed of the get-together) and Angela was at work, as she usually is on Saturday nights.

So I went home, thinking maybe they'd left a message on my machine during the day that I hadn't gotten since I didn't go home after babysitting.

Nope.

By this point, every insecurity I've ever felt about my status with this particular group of people (And each individual in the group) had come to the surface and plopped itself down with a very confident thud.

"We are right," they told me. "You aren't part of this group, and this is their way of making sure that you know it this time."

What could I answer? Not one of these people has contacted me of his or her own initiative since we moved out of the house back in July, and those that weren't still living there at that point hadn't contacted me by choice since well before that. None of these people remembered me on my birthday, or remembered that I'd had one when I talked to them afterwards. Not one of them gives me any indication that she or he thinks about me outside of the times that I'm calling or something.

None has come to any of the concerts that I've put on, come with me to other concerts and events I've been to, stopped by my house randomly to say hello, or anything else to let me know that he or she cares about the fact that I'm alive.

So what could I say to my very confident insecurities?

Nothing.

I cried that night. I cried a great deal. And I curled up in the lap of God and sat there, rejoicing in the fact that He still loves me, that He still initiates contact, that He still cares about how I'm doing .. and yet wondering what I had done (or failed to do) within this group to make them all dislike me so much. The mutual friend of ours that got married last May (I blogged about her and her wedding and being a bridesmaid for her and all last year, and you can read those in the archives) still keeps in touch with me and doesn't make even my deepest-set insecurities feel that it's just out of pity or duty or anything else. She is a friend, and a good one, and has always been a good friend for/to me. So if even one person out of the whole group still loves and cares about me, how bad could I have been?

And I try to tell myself that I know this group of people well enough to know that they've got a great deal of other things going on in their lives and they're like this with most people. But then, they're not like this with everyone.

So, it hurt.

But I could feel God's presence so strongly in those hours. So very strongly.

Part of me wanted to just go out for a drive in the mountains or to go out to somewhere where I could be out in public, even if alone. Just to feel human life around me. And part of me wanted to call up the friend that I'd had tentative plans to spend time with Saturday night before I knew that there would be a group gathering. (Since this friend was also a friend of others in the group, I just invited her to the gathering, too. But the plan was I'd call on Saturday night to give her and her husband (and their baby) directions.) But I knew that if I went out with anyone, I'd just be thinking about being hurt once again so badly by this very same group of people, and I'd be thinking about how I felt like such a fool for letting them hurt me so much again (you know the saying, something about once is their fault, twice is my fault), and I'd be thinking about everything except having a good time out with a friend. And I didn't want to do that to any friends of mine, nor did I want to do that to myself.

So I stayed at home (my roommate was out with some other friends of hers, so I had the house all to myself -- which was actually a very good thing, 'cause if she'd've been there, I wouldn't have "grieved" properly and vented my frustration and whatnot) and I cried. And I wrote a little. And I read some. And I watched a movie, which actually had a few of these issues involved in it so that it was unexpectedly appropriate.

And I called on Sunday to find out what had happened (there always is that off and unfortunate chance that there was a terrible accident and *that* is why no one called me, and it's always good to know that the people you care about were not involved in an accident -- or to find out that they were so that you can pray and be there, or perhaps mourn, as needed).

Basically, it boiled down to forgetting and not really missing me.

Hopefully, I won't be so much of a fool in the future.

More than that, though, I hope that my heart does not get yet harder, does not have yet another layer of the wall built up around it. I don't want to lose out on other friendships in the future because some people do not think I'm worthy of friendship.

My loss and theirs, but not something that should hurt me so much again.