Caught between friends again. No one friend's fault, but I find myself bitching to one friend about how another's been annoying me and that's not fair to anyone involved. At the time it just feels like venting, which is a good and necessary thing at times, but when all it does is further distance the friends, and make more concrete my irritations due to speaking them, I can't think that it can be doing anything good. I should stop, or at least make my talking about it constructive discussion rather than malicious gossip. Ok, so it's not gossip in the sense of 'did you hear she screwed so-and-so's best friend while pregnant with so-and-so's baby on crack', but still. I step back and see myself doing these things and I really don't like it. But how do I change it?

On the other hand, I can't be eternally loyal to everyone when everyone doesn't get along. I would like to, but such a situation is not stable, and when I honestly don't understand where one person is coming from it gets pretty hard to defend her or even stay neutral.

If only I could actually put into words and say things when I think them, I could make my problems with some behavior more immediately obvious rather than letting it fester to the point where I end up bitching to other people about it. Easier to say than do, and of course the initial problem is saying anything at all, at least for me.


On a completely different note, amusing coincidence of the month: last week I was going to the Diesel with Tikva when we ran into Tikva's friend Jesse, who gave me a very nice backrub (first time I'd met him). Tonight I was going out to dinner with a whole bunch of people who know one of my friends from college who was visiting for the weekend, and who should show up but Jesse, who as it turned out dated Barbara's (the college friend) sister some years ago. Small world and all that. But I got another backrub :)