Am I broken?

Is it okay for guys to be emotional? Don't men have feelings? How do you vent our your feelings as a guy? Are you not supposed to have an emotional side? Well, I do not really know the answers to these questions. What I do know is, I don't believe in the whole 'Men don't cry' thing. Men do cry, and yes I do cry too. Crying is an emotion, and if you cannot express that, maybe something is wrong with you.

I am pretty bad at keeping friends, I feel I don't take enough efforts to "maintain" the friendship. I never really understood what "maintaining" a friendship meant. I always believed that if you like or love someone, set them free, if they feel the same way for you, that feeling will keep you bonded. This maybe the reason I never really had a lot of friends, neither in school, nor in college and not even now. I always had only a handful of friends at any phase in life. I don't know if it was strange or unconventional since I used to feel jealous of people who had large groups of friends, party friends, school friends, college friends, workplace friends. Was I anti social? Maybe not.

It was always like, if I make a new friend, I would want to hang out and talk with him a lot, up to a point where we both would feel that we know almost everything about each other. By my experiences, people usually did not like it. Maybe they thought I was clingy, or one of those 'forever alone' types who would want to hangout every single day. But it wasn't that. I was just different in the way of connecting to people and making new friends. Some of them took it well, some of them did not and gradually stopped being friends.

Same is my case with letting people go. I value people a lot to just let them go. Till today, I have never let any person in my life go. There might be many with whom I don't talk now, but that is just because of the communication gap, and not because we let our friendship go. I cannot imagine saying to someone that I don't want to see you anymore, or our relationship is done. I feel too guilty to do that. I might say some things when I am mad at someone, but I feel bad for them, and I apologize in a couple of hours when my anger's gone. Straight to the point, I have difficulty losing people and letting relationships go. People tell me that its better to sometimes let things go, but I just cannot! I keep pondering over what could have gone wrong and what could I have possibly done that jeopardized the relationship. I get attached to people pretty quickly and expect the same from them. These expectations fail me. I become upset when I don't get the same attention that I give to that person, in return. I have even let my self respect go in some cases, to maintain a good relationship with the person.

Is getting attached to people my problem? Maybe its just the way I am built! 

When nothing works for you, just close your eyes and think about the good times, think about every difficulty you have been through, think about how you tackled it, and finally think of how you are as a person. This person that you are today, is because of those difficult times you powered through. They made you. You are stronger today because of all those troubled phases of your life. Every person has a struggle phase in his life, which tests him, his character, his tolerance, his mental and physical ability, and at the end of it what you get is a more advanced version of you.

When I first moved to the US, I never thought it would teach me so many things. Well I am here to learn and pursue my masters, but academic learning is not something I am talking about. I am talking about the unconventional things that you learn, life experiences and most importantly, people! These are the things, your friends and family in India do not know, things that only students who stay in the US know about. You will have never noticed these things when you were living inside your eggshell, protected by your parents and relatives. Living alone and away from your family teaches you these small things that define you as a person. Cooking for yourself, cleaning your rooms, cleaning the apartment, living an organized life bounded by time, money and work, is a precious experience that will definitely help you in the longer run, though not immediately. 

There will be times when things are not working out for you, even when you are working at and giving your best. Your roommates and your friends will be your greatest strength during these times, because they are the only family you have away from home. Always think of these tough times as a test that you are being put through, and as Monica says, "Tests make us all better learners". At the end what is important is the bigger picture. Smile through these hard times and learn how to handle stressful situations. 

Why am I writing all this today? Well, I am going through the exact same feeling right now. The feeling of being alone, having no one to talk to when nothing is working out for me. I never actually believed in astrology (or the whole bad stars thing) but the past year has been a really rough one for me. Nothing worked in my favor despite my sincere efforts, not getting credit for my work, not being recognized, and not making great progress in my field of strength either. As a result, I started cursing my stars, saying that everyone has this phase in his life when the stars are bad for him and affect his life. I kept believing that my good times will start when the stars are good again. Until recently, when I had a sleepless night when I was thinking about every single thing that did not work out for me in the past year. I somehow realized that it is not about the stars, but about my perspective. "If I keep thinking that its not going to work for me because I having a bad phase in life, nothing will work for me. I need to change my perspective of looking at things and change will come from within me!". The result, I have started looking positively at life and accepting every bad thing happening to me as a chance to improve myself, as a chance to get up and start working again.

Its not easy for me to do it, because I have always had people around me right since my childhood to help and support me, be it my family, relatives or friends. But this is like life in a nutshell, and I am sure after this initial struggle period, I will be able enough to face the real challenge, you probably know by now what it is.