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.