It seems the older I get the more I have to learn about friendships and relationships, attachment, and what was for me a lack of ever having been properly socialized. Growing up with parents that didn’t even want to spend time with me, it comes as no surprise that I have grown up simply wanting to be liked. I know that wanting people to like me is a normal feeling but when you lose yourself into the want and the nagging need the outcome as I have learned can be disastrous.
I’ve known for a while that for various reasons even with all the loss suffered in the last year, with my parents moving to Bali and showing me just how big of assholes they really are, having a full breakdown from one of my very best friends moving to Ontario, and to still having to deal with a relentless stalker, that there was more pain coming because I knew more people had to go.
In the ways that I’ve grown and in this challenging yet still good place – even with the pain and loss I find myself in and even though for the last year I’ve pictured killing myself almost every single day, I’ve literally kept my lips glued shut while I learned important lessons such as how to not emotionally delete people from my life over petty drama and how to send someone an email who has hurt me so bad I feel like I’m on fire without attacking them or lashing out in any way shape or form. I spent so much time JUST wanting people to like me that I took no time to learn how to tell people when they’d pissed me off because then in my mind they wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore so for a lot of years I took a lot of shit.
It is really interesting to me that I now know that the people who I was afraid to tell when I was upset, afraid to say stop saying you want to lick my husband bitch, were the same people that my gut was screaming at me from day one not to let into my life. The signs were plastered all over the wall and I’m sure they felt similar about me but gave me a shot also.
I don’t think knowing that something is ending makes it easier to end, it doesn’t make it hurt any less, and in a perfect world if I had three toxic friendships I’d have had a minimum of a month in-between each loss to recover, regroup, accept responsibly for how I contributed to the friendships failing and forgive the other side and move on to greener pastures.
But I didn’t, I lost those three friendships all in one week. The details are pretty much irrelevant, but I wasn’t being treated how I felt I should and in two of the cases was reminded of how my parents treat me, because neither person is actually here they don’t know a fucking thing, they’d rather see me how they want me to be, how I was. That person is still in me and loses control sometimes but I myself have never ever met a perfect person.
The journey through abuse, abandonment and depression has its dramatic moments, but only foolishly called melodrama because the ride is intense but it’s real and to tell me I’m exaggerating is to invalidate how I honestly feel which makes me vulnerable and super defensive and on come the bully neurons.
When the third friendship of the week ended, the newest of the three the other two were years in length an internal straw was broken, it was just too much. And although I know my shrink and my inner circle are right that I’ve come one hell of a long way, in that my reactions although sometimes still excessive are actions I am able to recover from and access my rational mind with increasing frequency, but that doesn’t mean that in some cases it isn’t still too late.
On Thursday when it was finally over I went to a place I don’t often find myself; I fell into the wallows of pathetic self despair. Why me, why now, why all at once, and I ugly cried for hours too over stimulated to let Adam near me freaking out to the point of smashing a framed photo of Adam and I, throwing my phone into the TV and fuck that was a moment making sure I hadn’t broken either, hyperventilating, storming around with nowhere to go pulling my hair trying to get the fuck out of my head until I was so tired I had nothing left and passed the fuck out.
Yesterday everything hit me even harder, but thankfully not from a feeling sorry for myself place, now I was angry crying, all day, even on my forty minute walk over the bridge I cried almost the entire way. I am so sick of how badly I abuse myself and how violent I am towards myself, like sure I’ve curbed my violent side to only attacking myself and inanimate objects but enough is a bloody nuff, I fucking hurt man.
With the pain and the loss of these friendships also comes a huge weight lift, I’ve spent the last six plus months concentrating on making contact with folks that I feel are a better fit for me, aside from all the social anxiety and depression shit I’ve learned to listen to my gut and my gut says it is quality and not quantity. And as I recently agreed with another girlfriend the older I get the less close friends I find I actually need.
All three of these friendships ended in a tempest of their own with emotional unlinking and emotional blocking on all shared social media sites and then I thought to myself, did I not learn how not to do that last year? I returned to all the sites and unblocked the three ladies, the friendships are over even if things could be worked out these are three women that I do not want in my life in any shape or form but the blocking? I’m so over that shit.
It feels like this part of the rollercoaster ride is over, the seatbelt has been released and I’m still dizzy but my head is facing straight ahead.
*title lyrics property of Tori Amos
