Some Food for Thought on Friendships
Spotted: Miss B and her thoughts about friendships and relationships in general.
In the previous post detailing Miss B's massive change in her life and her struggles before finally getting a job, Miss B definitely credited her perseverance in this whole journey to her support system. However, Miss B also had some strained relationship with some people after her decision to drop the aspiration to pursue medical school; some much more earlier almost immediately after they knew her decision. Unilaterally Miss B decided she doesn't need people who will mock her decision in her life, especially from people decades older than her who are family friends of her parents.
Recently though, Miss B has been debating on a different type of toxicity in her relationships with some friends; toxic positivity if you will. Rather than directly insult or mock Miss B, these friends instead will support Miss B during her rough times, but it seems when Miss B is thriving again, these friends will not share her happiness. Looking back, this friend seemed to support Miss B when she wanted to pursue graduate school because it was her passion. Miss B already knew they had different outlooks on career choices as her view was that she doesn't care about passion in life, her career choice was to major in what she was good at and what would offer her the highest salary. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. Miss B understands some people's passion doesn't have to intertwine with their career as their career instead can fund their hobbies outside of work.
However, when Miss B shared her good news of getting her first job offer, she could tell the friend was saying congratulations with a neutral tone. Then as Miss B was confiding in her struggles of balancing out delaying accepting her job offer while waiting for the other company to come through, this friend told Miss B since she was unemployed doing nothing the past year anyways, she should just turn the job down and wait for the other job to see if Miss B will get it. The logic was since Miss B wanted to pursue passion which was research, and she's already waited for so long, what's a few months longer. Miss B was flabbergasted by this advice. First off, Miss B was only finished with school half a year ago, and she had been interning at a lab the past few months albeit it was unpaid, but it still wasn't like Miss B was doing nothing, which this friend knew. She stated she doesn't care about passion, but Miss B did, so basically to Miss B it sounded like she should just suck it up. To add salt to the wound, when Miss B tried to bring up the fact that her internship ended already, she can't just actually do nothing as she also doesn't wanna go on vacation while job searching this friend just straight up said yeah but you don't have money. To which Miss B struggled to respond to this friend's comment because Miss B fundamentally knew yes, she doesn't have income, but she's been working throughout college and her parents would also not deny her if she had wanted to go on vacation to visit friends; it was just Miss B would feel too guilty to do that so she hadn't gone on any vacations. However, Miss B didn't want to say that since she had a feeling if she did, her friend would not take it well as it could come off as tone-deaf. Miss B just said so I should do this job then no? Why would I not take this job if I have nothing to do, and I need money to do other things. Her friend just said Miss B is still young, she has time to decide and explore, and Miss B was unable to respond because she didn't follow the logic of this conversation anymore.
At this point Miss B realized the conversation was turning unpleasant for her, and she didn't want to continue this talk so she moved on to asking how her friend has been. After the call though, Miss B was definitely reflecting on what the shit she just heard, and this feeling of eating shit was exemplified as Miss B talked with all of her other friends. Everyone offered words of congratulations and empathy on the stickiness of navigating the situation. Everyone had told Miss B to try to delay the offer letter deadline and try to rush the other job's interview process with different conversation scripts. Miss B realized everyone was giving her actual helpful actionable advice that could solve the issue she was having while the other friend just gave her surface level advice that was just turn down this job or giving positive sayings like you are still young don't worry.
Miss B doesn't even know how to conceptualize this situation into words, but maybe this is part of adulting. People change, and perhaps after college is when people have their next big change in life, where people start diverging from their old friends due to differences in values.
You know you love me
xoxo