With friends like these …

I’m in a pretty dark place tonight. My anxiety is off the charts, I talked to my therapist about some of the most traumatic events in my past today, and my period started yesterday – knowing those things, I really shouldn’t take anything my brain is saying seriously right now … but how does one do that? How does one completely dissociate from the noise? I know there are those that can pull it off – and, to be clear, I don’t exactly envy them – but I’ve never managed that trick.

I’ve been thinking – and feeling, let’s be honest – a lot about friendship for the past few days. I am very fortunate to have some of the best friends any person could ask for. People who really and truly care, who have held me together during some pretty terrible things over the past twenty years or so, not to mention the shitstorm that has been the past two years. But I’m tired of being mired in the muck and I can only imagine the toll it has taken on them to constantly be propping me up. Still they’re consistently there. They drop what they’re doing to help.

Then there are … others. I’ve had a few friendships implode in my life for various reasons, these moments generally come about once every seven years or so … until this past July. Since the middle of July I’ve lost about fifteen ranging from the friendly acquaintance to the deeply loved. There have been some extreme circumstances, sure, and a crucible is a much better test of character than a field of flowers but I can’t help but wonder what is going on with me. Am I just that bad at picking people? Am I just that bad of a friend?

I had one of the deeply loved ones tell me recently that it’s hard to be my friend because I’m too self-absorbed. Ouch. She gave me some things to work on in order to keep her friendship and, while some are the very real and valid get out of my own head and be better at listening sort of things, some feel like total bullshit. It feels like she doesn’t actually want to be my friend – she wants to mold me into someone I’m not. She doesn’t approve of how I manage my other relationships, she is tired of me grieving something she doesn’t think I should want or be involved in, she doesn’t want to deal with my tears, I’m not queer enough to have a shareable opinion about being queer, I’m not allowed to ask that she not use the word ‘cunt’ as an insulting description of a female-identified person, I’m not experienced enough to provide guidance to other newbies, etc. I don’t even know how to approach a conversation about this cuz how do I express any of this without making it all about me?

Another one, this one somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, has decided that we aren’t friends anymore because I asked for some space and, when she didn’t give it to me – that is to say, when she told me over and over and over again about how she was going to give it to me – I took it for myself. I gave myself a few days off. She’d just given me a diatribe about how the trauma I experienced recently and the resultant fallout have negatively impacted her ability to develop a new partner relationship… even though neither she nor this potential partner (nor that person’s current partner) were in any way involved in what happened to me.

Then again, I’m totally stuck in my head so of course I can come up with all sorts of reasons why they’re the jerks and I’m the victim. God, I’m so fucking sick of feeling like a victim. Of all the aspects of my mother that I NEVER want to claim for myself, that’s got to be at the top of the fucking list. I read over this and that’s the feeling I get though.

I feel like such an impostor in my own skin.

Fraud