What separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to friends?

To me, the word friend is a very loosely thrown around word. For me, it's easy to call most people friend, because to me a friend can be a person who I am cool with, and I can have a decent conversation. I'm not one of those people who says it's really hard for you to be my friend, and that if I don't talk to you, nothing personal, but I just don't f@#$ with most people, because I do.

The distinction for me lies in how much you really know about me, how much I let you in. I can talk to a lot of people, but there comes a point where I just put up a wall and say that's it. That's all you get to know. Sometimes I want to let people know what the deal is, tell them about myself, but if the trust is not quite there, if there is a vibe, an aura, an inkling that just tells me I can't quite trust you completely, I immediately shut down.

What's deceptive is that I am so outgoing, and so lively, and so extroverted, that most people don't even recognize it; they don't even realize that in a 30 min conversation, I haven't said anything worthwhile about myself. This comes from years of building; brick after brick going up until the wall was in place and strong. As an after I built a door, but it's a trick door so only persistent people can figure it out and come in.

If you are in, then you're a really good friend. You are trustworthy and kind, and I have a lot of faith in you.

But you will probably never be my best friend. It takes A LOT for me to call anyone or thing my best friend because those come and go. I can't trust that deeply yet, so I'm content, at this point, to have a lot of friends, a few good friends, and no best friend.

So to answer the question, what separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to friends? Trust. Your gut tells you right then and there if trust can ever grow, and if you know it can, nurture that friendship and let it grow past friend to good friend. If your gut tells you not so much, then maybe be a friend or no friend at all. But trust is something that you can recognize initially, just listen.

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Which is worse: completely bottling up your emotions or being an emotional geyser?

Well as a person who is known for completely bottling up my emotions, I have to say this end of the stick is not fun. Usually, I just push mine aside and make a joke and move on thinking that the problem is gone, but it never is. Eventually I erupt, and have a break down, and after the eruption, I realize that I have been deteriorating the entire time unknowingly. All this being said, I think this is still preferable to being an emotional geyser, because when you erupt, you erupt once, and it's a much more person dilemma. With being a geyser you wind up spewing you crap on everyone in sight, and that is just a quick and easy way to not make friends. When I say preferable, I'm using that term loosely because either way, you wind up alone in your pain because pain is one of those things you suffer from alone. No matter how many people you tell, no matter how much they relate, your pain is your pain and you cannot transfer that over to someone else. So here's the breakdown: being bottled up is bad because you are killing yourself slowly while functioning up to a point, and when you break, you are alienating yourself from others mentally, until a complete shut down occurs. You then are forced into digging yourself out of a whole. Being a geyser is also bad because while you are boiling over every chance you get, you feel better at the moment, but you are standing there alone. You can't even properly interact with people because when people aren't watching you blow up, they are trying to avoid any possible triggers. Honestly it's just a case of the lesser of two evils. We should of course strive to find a happy medium: communicate when the problem starts, and pick our battles. Phew, I worked up a sweat.

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So in short, you believe that women, being distinctly different, can never be treated as an unequal in society because they have the ability of pregnancy?lol. I do agree with your conclusion however, but I don't think I agree with your deductive reasoning

**WARNING: I had a good ass answer to this, and then I clicked something and it went away, so I’m re-writing this in a bitter state of mind.

You and I both know that what you said was a GROSS simplification of what I said. First off, I did not say anything about “never” being prejudice towards women, and I certainly didn’t say anything about the only reason being because women could get pregnant. Listen to me closely, because I am not repeating my answer:

A woman is anatomically and mentally different from a man. There is science backing up this difference so there is no refuting this point. I guess this would be the point where you stop reading and make some snide comment, but I encourage you keep reading my friend. Because a woman is different from a man so fundamentally, there is no comparison in deciding whether African Americans have more prejudice or women have more because this fundamental difference does not exist between a black man and a white man.

Is this still too hazy for you? Well let me paint a picture. In a work place, a woman will normally get paid less than a man. Do you know why? It’s not usually because she less competent than a man, so whoops took that comment about me calling women incompetent. It’s because there is 99.9% chance more of a likelihood of a woman taking maternity leave than there is of a man taking one. From the scope of a company, they are creating a padding for themselves so that during a woman’s time off, there is due compensation for her replacement. Yes, yes, yes, there is unfairness because women can’t help the fact that they get pregnant, but hey they will always be the one who gets pregnant. We enjoy the fact that we cannot get fired from our job because of pregnancy, but um just because we are having a baby does not mean our workload will change. Someone has to work overtime or be hired to handle the flack, and as woman who is as mentally competent, we want job security, so we have to make sacrifices. It is not fair, but there are certain physical things (LIKE GETTING PREGNANT) that play a role into prejudice, and this is more justifiable (while prejudice is not justifiable) than someone's skin tone being different. There are some things that a man is just more anatomically-lent to doing like pull-ups or taking control of a room, that while a woman can certainly do these things, it would certainly be easier to do this if she were male. And vice versa, there are some things that a woman is just more anatomically-lent to doing like HAVING A BABY that a man could not do. If there was an African American man that is pitted against a white man and these men were the exact same except for their skin color, there are no justifiable reasons to have prejudice because skin color is as trivial as eye color or nail-bed size. It has not effect on anatomic or mental capabilities of either man, and the fact that there is still discrimination despite this knowledge is a much a sadder and desperate situation.

Now I know this came off mean, but technology pisses me off, but I still love you. Keep up the questions. It keeps me sharp.

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Don't you think that ending prejudice toward women would have a greater effect, hence there are more women in the world than African Americans? That is, if you can quantify prejudice.

If we were to give a woman to experience inequality, what would that mean? She doesn't get paid as much? She's not a leader of society? But there is a slight problem with this assessment: are we saying that in places of leadership and the public eye are the only places where a woman can achieve equality? Women are the bearers of children. We are sacked on with the duty to reproduce, and no matter how hard men try, they cannot carry on the future of their own race. Yes we may not always get the most money, but men can't even produce a legacy for all the success they have garnered. Women and men are not necessarily unequal, they are just different. Their roles are different. Adam Smith had the right idea when he said that the division of labor is the most successful way to run a business; well a division of the roles in human life are the way to come as close to possible to a successful life.

On the other hand, African Americans are a race of people that just cannot win. There is a mentality weighing down the African Americans, that if did not exist would open the doors for the African American people could flourish. Men, women, children alike could then not be so innately repressed. African Americans are truly unequal because they have the same mental and physical capacities as any other human, but because of their color, they are not treated with their due equality. A shade of skin color stops a person with the EXACT same qualifications from being hired. We can't say this for the men and women dichotomy. No matter how hard we try, women are just fundamentally different from men. That does not make us unequal, it makes us distinct. African Americans are put into a box not because of any physical incapabilities or mental incapabilities, but because of something that in the grand and not so grand scheme of things is so trivial. So I do stick by my guns. Take away the prejudice of being black.

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