It happened!! For people who have been reading this blog, it finally happened. The girl that had meant sooo very much to me last year had finally reached out! I cannot tell you how happy I was!! Yep, was. Ok, let me explain how this all started and hopefully by the end it’ll make some kind of sense.

She had reached out to me through a mutual third party, and she had asked them to pass a message to me. In the message she mentioned that she took responsibility for our separation and that she was really sorry for the fact that we hadn’t spoken.  After getting this message, I ended up responding to her through the same mutual party and setting up a time for us to talk and when we spoke again I…I can’t even explain how happy I was. I teared up at my keyboard. Having her back on speaking terms with me felt amazing! And I let her know that I missed so so very much, and she had said that she had missed me. We spend the entire evening talking and hanging out until almost 3am and I admit that I have not been that happy in a long, long time. It just felt so awesome to have that connection back, that part of me that had felt so hurt and abandoned felt soothed and calm for the first time in quite a while.

But then it started happening. And I’m not sure if I’m holding onto a grudge or it is that small part of my self worth that is bothered. See eventually we spoke about what happened and maybe it was the way it happened, or the way she explained it but the way I approached the issue of, “What had happened” was that I more or less left the door open for any kind of explanation without trying to back her into a corner. Because I understand that sometimes it’s hard to tackle really heavy subjects when you’re just reconnecting or rebuilding a friendship. But she did offer a reason which was her anxiety. She had mentioned that she got stuck because it had been a while and that her anxiety only made everything worse, which I get. So I accepted what she offered, no questions asked.  But I think that was the problem. Because after a couple weeks of talking, I realized that I still had questions and a lot of hurt. 

As of right now, we still talk everyday.  Obviously, it’s not like it was before and that is totally ok.  Not like it’s bad, it’s just different, and I think that’s a good thing. We had been in almost constant contact with each other previously, and while that was ok with me because I cared so deeply for her, I have a feeling that it took a toll on her because she was in a relationship. And when she initially expressed that she had feelings for me, we had a talk about how I never wanted to ruin or effect her relationship in any way. In my head we were just too people who had feelings for each other, but I understood that she had more feelings for her boyfriend and she did not want to do anything to endanger that. However, in retrospect I’m not sure that kind of “understanding” is sustainable. At least not the way I handled it after what had happened.

And if any of you are wondering what happened, well I was in a very bad accident and I think when that happened it inadvertently forced my feelings for her to the forefront, which in turn caused her to really think about and face her own feelings for me. Think of it like this soft subtle music that we were both listening to suddenly became this loud, blaring noise that obscured everything for me, and I think to a certain extent, for her as well. The end result was that I think it was just enough pressure on her to run away. I know it’s pointless at this juncture in time, but I wish with all my heart that it had ended differently. I wish I had never gotten hurt, and I wish I had never heard her cry when I had gotten home from the hospital. I wish I would never have known how supportive she could truly be when she cared about me. I wish she hadn’t of been there with the nurses and had helped me when I was confused and hurting and most of all…alone. I wish I had never known these things because maybe then it would make forgetting the pain she had caused when she just suddenly stopped being that person so much easier. Because to experience her as the opposite kind of person was one of the most confusing and excruciating parts of our separation. It made no sense to me since one of the reasons I grew to care about her so much was because of how caring and how openly supportive she was of both me and my feelings. But to see her so…unkind and uncaring towards me made me doubt her as a person, and it made me doubt my own judgement. Was she really this kind and caring person if it was so easy for her to just walk away in my proverbial darkest hours?

Now don’t get me wrong, I have forgiven her. Because I understand that forgiveness had nothing to do with her. Instead it has everything to do with my own peace. But it’s the memories that bother me. Memories of my own pain that her ghosting or abandoning me had caused. Now I’ve put an extraordinary amount of effort into just trying to move past all the pain but it’s in trying to move past so much pain that has given me cause to wonder: Is there a point where in forgiving someone for so many things, you start to overlook your own self worth? Because isn’t there a correlation between how much you are willing to overlook vs how much you value yourself? Or am I just being crazy? Because at the heart of everything I feel like that may be what’s bothering me. It’s presenting a dilemma that I am not sure how to solve, because I’m not sure what emotion is driving this discomfort. Is it me just not forgiving everything and holding onto the sheer amount of pain they’ve caused? Or is it that the amount of pain they’ve cause is just too much for me to be ok with?

And please, don’t bother saying, “It’s up to you James…” because I know!! Trust me I know it’s up to me. Just keep in mind that I have never cared about someone this much. I have never been open and vulnerable with anyone, so I’ve never experienced these types of feelings or emotions. The way I normally work is simply not to get involved emotionally with anyone, but obviously that’s not healthy and that is one of the things I’m working on. To be open and vulnerable with someone while in a romantic relationship instead of just avoiding vulnerability or relationships. Yet, this person completely caught me off guard because…it was sooo easy to be open with them and care for them. When I spoke to my therapist about her, my therapist had described what I had felt as, “The closest to feeling to what unconditional love feels like for you”. Which was heartbreaking and wonderful all at the same time. So yes, I know the decision of how I handle it is up to me, but what I do not know is how to tell what emotion is doing what so I can ultimately make that decision.

In a weird way you know what this feels like? Have you guys ever seen a picture of where salt water meets fresh water? It’s like this funny natural phenomenon that creates almost a solid line along where they meet. It’s like on one side of the line is this crystal clear water, then on the other side is typically this murky brown cloudy water. That’s what I feel. One on side is the clear cut way that I’m used to dealing with people: No attachments. No feelings. No mess. But on the other side is this cloudy situation where I care about someone so very much, but there is something about it that I don’t understand and that doesn’t make sense to me. Because I want to learn how to forgive and I want to be at peace and the thought of being without her in my life in any way, shape, or form not only disrupts that peace but is almost physically painful. At the same time however, I also realize that sometimes there really is just too much pain to overlook.

So I’m not sure on which side of the waters my emotions are.

I am not good. I feel terrible. I want to type something, but I’m afraid to say it here even within the confines of this blog’s anonymity. Because of the level of honesty required to say it. And no, before anyone freaks out, it doesn’t involve anything like murder or stalking or anything super crazy like that. What I feel is that somehow I’m mentally withdrawing from my friends, the few that I’ve made over the span of years. The ones that I’ve fought my own mental illness for, and its over something I don’t quite understand.

So for those who are just reading this blog for the first time, the reason I started it was because I had gone through a lot of heavy hitting bad things in 2020, not to mention that I had not dealt with anything that had happened in my childhood. The end result was a crippling depression. I literally couldn’t get out of bed, I wasn’t eating and I was counting the pain meds that I had to see exactly how many I had to take so I wouldn’t wake up again. Now, I had never experienced something like that, but thankfully I had a group of three friends who I had leaned on pretty heavily while this was happening.

However, sometimes I’m not sure if this was a good thing. I opened up so much to these people and told them everything, everything that I was struggling with.  But now…now I almost feel that in opening up that much with them, it almost feels like I changed their perception of me. See, in my group of friends I was the one everyone came to. For their problems and for their frustrations because despite whatever crazy I have going on in my head, when it comes to struggling or knowing how to deal with emotional pain, I can take on a lot. I can empathize pretty well with people and I know all the steps to being mentally healthy because I’ve had them recited to me before, I’ve even had them written out for me on paper.  Do I follow them?  No, not in the slightest. Not because I didn’t want to, but lets just say that if mental health is anything like physical health that I’d always be able to lose the weight but never keep it off. So I can listen to you, provide a sympathetic ear, and even tell you that I recommend a therapist because they are a great resource to have for your emotional healing and well being. All without doing any of these things for myself, and while I am always near my own breaking point. But I won’t tell anyone that. Because that would make me look like I couldn’t take on their pain, and that makes me feel weak. Is this healthy? Nope. But is this how I functioned on a day to day basis for years? Yep.

But this past summer my depression was so bad, and so enveloping that I ended up doing two things I never do with my friends. I cried in front of them, and I told them my problems. After several months I got a therapist mostly out of guilt because I felt like if I kept going to my friends for help and for my emotional ass talks, they wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore. And no, none of them actually said that, but I think some of them were frustrated with me on occasion and on others I feel like some of them tried to avoid me a time or two. Not to mention there was this particular person I cared tremendously about that just straight up ghosted me, so I was both hurt and afraid that would happen with any other of my friends.

That was almost a year ago and to be fair about six months ago I just disappeared from my social circle to try and heal and not drive my friends crazy. But what just happened with my two of my friends is making me feel…both terrified and almost ashamed for being so completely vulnerable to them. So, as most of you know, I’m a gamer. And most of my friends I hang out with or talk with play the same games I do, but I had stopped gaming all together when I dropped out of sight from my friends. I really did just kind of go full hermit mode. Fast forward almost six months and I start sending out some messages and dropping a few calls that I might be coming back.

I am just not sure on if I should stay around because gaming is painful. The memories surrounding gaming only brought back thoughts of sadness, isolation, abandonment, and pain. The ironic part is that gaming, for me, was always kind of an escape. And yes, I fully acknowledge that at times, it was an unhealthy way to not deal with whatever was happening in real life. Yet, what was happening presented such a conundrum because now the place I usually escape to, was suddenly because the place I needed to escape from. And I hate that. I hate that I can’t just log into a game and lose myself in it like I usually do. I am frustrated by the fact that the people who I considered my friends seem to occasionally take the approach of, “out of sight, out of mind.” And that hurts. It hurts because I know my friends are not my therapists, but on the same token, on a level I can’t explain it almost feels like even though they know I am not involved with gaming at the moment, the invites to do things in game slowly and inevitably stop. Then it’s feels as if you’re slightly forgotten because they’re continuing on like normal, meanwhile your normal is nowhere near the same.

And lets not get things misunderstood, I am in no way blaming my friends for how I feel or saying it’s their fault that I’m not getting better. What I am explaining is how the natural process of life moving on with or without you can seem isolating and painful. No one prepares you for that. No one tells you that when your friends stop coming around through no fault of their own, even that can seem like such a painful process because it makes you and your pain feel unseen and unwanted. And that pain leads to feeling like a burden. Because in my head I think, if they stop calling, if they stop hanging around you and stop inviting you to things it’s because they don’t want to be around you. Because when things really mattered even the person I trusted and had been open with the most ghosted me. So isn’t that proof that being vulnerable and trying to reach out is too much of a burden for people? That truly letting people know just how sad you are, is not something that anyone wants to deal with?

It’s just too much. Right now, thinking and overthinking and trying to figure out if my friends are just, “putting up with me” or are they  genuinely trying to help is exhausting. And again, it’s not my friend’s fault. It’s just that from what I’ve been shown, being open and vulnerable despite whatever anyone says, only results in loss. In a loss of respect from your friends, a loss of friendship, a loss of feeling like your friends truly want to game with you.  It also adds this uncertainty in the friendship where before there was none. It’s like you suddenly don’t know if they’re including you because they really still want to, or is that you’ve become that depressed person who has no one else to game with. And I don’t want to be that. I want my friends to enjoy their games, I want them to be happy with the people they include in their gaming and that includes me. I just…I just feel like I need to leave because I want them to be happy.

And I know that I’m not.