I am NOT the strong friend.

One of the hardest things about life is that you never really know if you're making a mistake until after you make it. Because it isn't the act itself that's the bad decision but the result of the act. For years I've allowed people in my life: friends, family, coworkers, associates: to really take advantage of me and drain my energy to their advantage. This wouldn't be an issue if they would pour back into me, but this generation is selfish so that rarely ever happens. I allow them to do it and then find myself feelings down, lonely and powerless. A few years ago I didn't know what would be the best solution so I went with an extreme and decided to cut all the people from my life that were draining the most energy from me without returning it back. It worked wonders, I was rejuvenated and started to feel like I could heal. I'm far into my healing journey but I'm starting to question if I'm making the same mistakes again. Am i allowing people to drain me of my energy again now that its being restored? Will this ever end? Friendship is really a lost art. It feels like no one knows how to be a friend anymore and I'm not sure if that because of how we've "evolved" as a generation or because we've become older and forgotten what's truly important in life and how to maintain it. I think about even the media while I was growing up, friendship was shown everywhere. From Living Single, Friends, Sex And The City and even Toy Story. "You got a friend in me" that was such a monumental song from my childhood, even the friends theme song. "I'll be there for you." Did people forget that? Because right now it's feeling a lot like "see no one told me life was going to be this way" *claps.* I blame social media partially, it's ironically made people anti-social. We used to have actual conversations and in ways that didn't feel forced either. Social media creates these quotes a post that thousands of people repost and they internalize these things not questioning who it came from or what credentials they have. I saw a post recently saying that it's not normal for people to have this much "access" to you. ACCESS. As if they're an object. What does that even mean? The crazy thing is back in the day we had MORE "access" to each other. I saw my friends everyday and we would talk on the phone for hours when we got home, But what's happening is that these cellphones are so full of so much content that our brains become overstimulated to the point where we no longer have any more dopamine in our brains to actually socialize as real humans. Call, text, youtube, instagram, twitter, facebook, tik tok, games, music. It's overwhelming. But at some point people have to take accountability for the amount of effort they put into a relationship too. Stop making excuses for why you aren't being a good friend. EVERYONE is going through things but thats why we need friends so we can get through things TOGETHER. People really underestimate how important friendships truly are. Text your friends, ask them how they're doing, HANG OUT WITH THEM, encourage your friends. Especially the strong friends because people love to trauma dump on their friends but tune out when that same friends needs to trauma dump. Don't do that because we're not accepting it anymore. I am not your therapist, I am not here for you convenience and I am NOT the strong friend.