expectations

I can't help but expect love from my mother, support from my best friends, a good night out from other friends, advice from some, judgement from others. Generally I try to avoid the friends from whom I have come to expect judgement, but as my life has been changing its course I've seen my expectations violated. Some friends have decided that the course I'm turning toward isn't the best one, whether for selfless reasons or otherwise. I've had about enough of that.

Those expectations go both ways. I expect love and support from my friends, and they expect me to be the person they chose to be friends with. Does that mean if you become my friend at step 1, I cannot be a new person at step 10? No. Definitely not. (I definitely hope not.) But at which point between step 1 and 10 is it acceptable to break up with a friend who can't handle the changes?

My goals have changed drastically in the past 7 months. My lifestyle has changed. My thought processes have changed. My priorities have changed. If those were what created a friendship, then that friendship obviously won't last through them.

Thank you, friends, for being the kind I appreciate the most. If you are reading this, you are not the friend I plan to break up with somewhere between step 5 and 7. You are the friends who may suggest that I'm making a bad decision, you might point out a better idea, you sometimes choose to look away when you see me taking a path I ought not to, but you don't judge. You are the friends who understand that everyone needs to make their own way. You let me make my choices and you listen to me whine afterward, even if you knew better. You are the reason I don't let those judgmental friends get to me.

So thank you for not feeling too much like I've violated your expectations.

And thank you for living up to every one of mine.

L