Friends..Ummmm, NO

Every once in awhile I peruse the internet looking back at my life before Korea by "looking" into the world of the people that I thought were my friends. It is interesting because in hindsight I am seeing that many people were only around for that period of time and were not meant to be lifelong friends. I just looked at the archives of one of my friends who has a blog and not once was my name mentioned...even while I was around. I find that interesting. I guess people "watched" the drama of my life and listened when I needed to talk but I was never considered a person worth mentioning in the mundane events of their day. I also look back on that time and I see that there was the Baha'i "elite"...a group of people who were best of friends as a result of their position in the Baha'i National Center or who they knew. A pretentious group of people with understandings of what was appropriate behavior and who should be around them. I realise now that maybe people were my "friends" out of pity...yeah, this probably sounds very harsh but I remember that when I got here the first year, I wrote to these people regularly and they never initiated any emails to me. I even called a few people.

I hate everything about my time in Chicago now. So much of it seems like a waste of time when I look at it. Other than the lessons I learned from my overwhelming tests there, I have taken nothing with me. Even my working situation wasn't that great. I loved some parts of it but I was subordinate to a person who was in the "elite" group, who was verbally abusive, and in all honesty, behaved like a jealous person because I didn't care about the "elite" group and communicated with members of the National Assembly easily.

It is interesting to look back and review my life. I am seeing where I included people in my life and maybe I was using them to have someone to talk to. I don't know, but in my mind they were lifelong friends. Once again I assumed wrong.