Losing Friends and Acquaintances.

FIRST. This is not a "woe is me, feel bad for me, I have no friends" post.
SECOND. You can look back to this post to see my explanation of how friendship kind of works in my head.

Moving on.

I went on kind of an unfriending spree this week on Facebook. I won't go over who I deleted, but I will say that I'm wrestling with it.

Myself, I get too emotional about this shit. Just last night, I saw that someone I knew (in person and on the internet; they live in a different state and we met on a website; we've met in person twice) had unfriended me. I no idea how long ago it was, what I did wrong, or if they even had a reason. Maybe they were just culling the herd.

But the thing is, is on a different website, this person is super-friendly to me. I sent a message and asked if they knew who I was, since my real name is not shown there. I guess they know who I am, but I haven't gotten an explanation as to why they have "unfriended" me on other websites. Not that they owe me an explanation. It's my insecurity, not theirs.

I will/would gladly tell those whom I have unfriended what their sin against me was. If they're interested.

But this is starting to make me re-think the whole "internet friends are real friends" idea. I have people out there that I think I will be in touch with for a long time. But then, the person above was one of those people. And something unknown happened.

I'm not beating myself up over this, but I have a problem. I really do invest myself in too many people. I know that's like someone whining that they are too beautiful or they have too much time on their hands. But I do say too much to too many and expect too much in return.

It's hard to convey exact meaning on the internet. We try to explain ourselves as best as we can, when we care, but it seems that the shit always ends up hitting the fan at some point. Some grievance will be committed, someone will completely (and vociferously) disagree with you, and things will fall apart.

Is it even worth having friendships?

I should have expected this.

Ugh. I just did preliminary midterm grades and without brekaing the law or anything, they are bad. Then, I get two emails in a row from students saying that they can't turn in their final paper today because some tragedy has befallen them. I have no idea how to reply.

I don't take stuff via email. Nothing. So when they say: "Can I email it to you?" it should be so easy for me to just hit reply and say: "No." But I can't. I'm not sure why. Maybe part of me believes that they are acturally telling the truth, but for the most part, I don't.

I don't want to send out a mass email saying "Hey kids I don't accept stuf via email" but I also don't want a confrontation in class over it. I am so very annoyed.

I just thought about it for a moment.

Student-

I cannot accept anything--especially major papers-- via email. You are more than welcome to bring it to me during my office hours, but please bear in mind that each calendar day that it is late is 5 points off the paper as a whole.

-Shaylin