Done.

When I think of how to describe myself one of the adjectives that comes to mind is giving. I enjoy making people happy whether it be with a photo session to capture a once in a lifetime moment or a favorite meal cooked with love. My acts of service are gifts that are given with love. This means that I will drop everything to celebrate a friend's birthday or cancel a ski lesson to attend a baby shower or find a special purse for a loved one while on vacation. If someone needs maternity clothes I will raid my basement stash and pass everything on with love, whether I have future plans for them or not.
And time and time and time again this ends up biting me right in my giant ass. The maternity clothes don't get returned when they're needed, the mother-to-be at the baby shower acts as if I'm not in attendance, the dinner made with specialty store ingredients is shoveled in as if it were from a box and not a word of thanks is uttered.
When I strive to make my friends feel important to me it is not so that it will one day be reciprocated. But is it really too much to ask that once in awhile it is?!? Is it too much to ask a friend of over 10 years, someone that I've known longer than my husband to be late to a single kid's soccer game to celebrate my own baby shower? Or a friend that I consider an actual sister from another mister to not plan her own birthday party during my son's first birthday party? I don't want to get petty and lay out all the multitudinous chores, labors of love that I have performed for this dear friend but suffice it to say that, as usual, the give and take is pretty much give and receive.
I am finding this more and more to be a pattern in my life. Why is that? Friends that I have loved for years are revealing themselves to be lacking in ways I have never seen before. Am I really such a pushover? Because along with giving I would include strong. Gullible would make its way into a top ten list of adjectives, but I had always passed that one off as a funny trait of mine. I am now finding it to not be quite so funny. I have gulled myself into trusting the untrustworthy, befriending the unworthy and giving to the takers.