Goal: To become a better communicator

I've realized that talking to people scares me sometimes a lot of the time. 
There are like, three people whom I never feel any anxiety about talking to--in my head, these are my ride-or-die peeps. I almost never fight with these people, and I know I can talk to them about ANYTHING and be listened to [even if it occasionally comes with a grain of judgment]. (The girl who currently has the same profile picture as me, something which even my ex-boyfriend wouldn't do, is a good example of this.) 
Then there are the people that used to be in that role, but have fallen or are in the process of falling out of it--I still talk to them when I need someone to talk to, and when we're around each other we hang out and it's like no time has passed at all, but they've lost that daily role in my life. While they would definitely still fall into my "The Important People" circle on Google+, talking to them doesn't always feel incredibly helpful...one of the key signs of being in this group. There are also three people who come to mind as clearly being part of this group.
Then there are what I like to call my foul-weather friends. This is the opposite of the fair-weather friends people often complain about. These are the friends that are near and dear to my heart, but whom I rarely actually talk to. But if some shit goes down, we are there for each other through the tears and the hug-needing and the serious conversations about our lives. I know they have my back, and I have theirs, but our relationships are pretty low-key most of the time. I'm sensing two people in this group. 
And then I'm starting to develop a new group, which I'm going to call the I-didn't-realize-how-good-a-friend-you-are friends. These are people I've started opening up to more recently, and whom I've realized I really ENJOY talking to. Getting close to them has been unexpected but very pleasant. I look forward to random-ish Facebook/gchats/running-into-each-other-on-campus-and-sitting-down-to-talks with them, and they almost always lead to in-depth discussions. I think there are four people in this group.
And this last group makes it clear how dissatisfied I am with the low-key-ness of my relationship with the people in the third group. Well, how dissatisfied I am with my contentedness concerning that low-key-ness is probably more appropriate. Friendships should never be crutches. And when I was younger, in the days before texting, I used to spend HOURS (a minimum of four daily) on the phone with my friends. We did homework together, watched TV together, sang songs together, talked about random shit, listened to each other breathe...we shared everything. And while I'm glad to be more of an independent person now that I'm semi-grown, I miss elements of that need to be close all the time. I miss feeling like I was actually sharing my life with other people. I've even had some interesting in-depth conversations with strangers this summer via my reliance on public transportation and messages on that dating site, and it has made talking to people I don't know through the safe semi-anonymity of the internet seem less frightening. And I've realized I'm developing this problem where I avoid conflict like the plague, and so will talk to lots of people about something problematic or potentially problematic I'm going through with someone until I feel like I've come up with a plan to resolve the issue...without ever even addressing the problem with that person. And that's just all kinds of not cute. And even when I do have the balls va-jay-jay to handle talking to people directly, I have a tendency to get flustered and downplay how I'm feeling once I'm there. And y'all know deference doesn't come naturally to me...also not cute.
So here's to keeping in better touch with the people that matter to me. And to carrying this self-imposed openness over into more of my real-world relationships, rather than just on this blog. And maybe even to phone calls. But definitely to communicating with other people, clearly and effectively and not shying away from how I feel. I want to have the same level of openness I have in my relationships with the people in Group 1 in all of my relationships. Maybe that's an impossible goal, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't work towards it anyway.