Expectations.

Confession: I struggle with high expectations.  

On the one hand, I really WANT to have high expectations of people in my life.  I know I can give a great deal to someone I care about, and I think that if I value myself, I will retain my high expectations of those in my life.

On the other hand, high expectations have been the source of a great deal of pain and disappointment for me.  In fairly recent times, I have been severely disappointed in people I expected to be terrific friends, and they turned out to be completely un-caring jerks.  Was the situation their fault for being terrible friends, or my fault for ever expecting them to be good ones?  

There are two people in my life who I know deserve and can achieve wonderful futures for themselves, but they both insist on lowering themselves for crappy partners and crappy cities.  Does the situation hurt me because they are making bad decisions, or because I expect them to make good ones?

I've always had a problem with birthdays - I would put monster effort into making someone feel special, so I expected them to do the same for me, so - you guessed it - I ended up having a lot of really bad birthdays.  And this year, I expected nothing.  So the simple acts of girlfriends paying for my dinner, Wes cooking for me, family making me lunch and cupcakes, and friends going out with me or sending me a sweet gift really felt nice - warm fuzzies.  


In the end, sometimes people do suck at being friends.  They can be self-centered and careless.  They can make bad decisions and make you want to throw up your hands and walk away.  But I can't control other people.  I can't always control how people make me feel.  But I can work on controlling my expectations.  It's sort of chicken-and-egg-ish, really.  Instead of expecting something great from people and being hurt when it doesn't come, maybe I should just live my life, and when someone naturally exceeds expectations as a friend, then I can be sure I appreciate that person fully.  


Yes, it's scary - even the thought of letting go of my expectations makes me feel a little panicked.  "What if people never meet them?  What if I am totally unhappy because people never step up?  What if my life and hopes for good relationships totally go to crap?"  


Here's hoping I can conquer this fear, be able to appreciate the people who show they deserve to be appreciated, and be able to just disengage my emotions from people who only seem to let me down.  I am hoping for a future in which I am happy without expecting much from others, so when they do give, I am genuinely happy and impressed by it.