If the friends I made throughout my life all lived in the same COUNTRY (nevermind the same state) that would be easier. I could have changed schools 40 different times and still maintained those budding relationships. It could have been easy to “show up” for those people and vice versa. I was a kid in the eras before social media…a time when long-distance phone calls, (nevermind INTERNATIONAL phone calls) were a limited privilege, not a basic first-world right. So, distance killed a lot of relationships for me. Lifelong friendships have always felt completely out of reach because communicating with friends was a struggle in itself.
Growing up as a military kid, it was hard to form meaningful friendships and that struggle has carried over into adulthood for me because by the time I was a teenager, I would just latch on to ANYONE that offered friendship… even if I felt uneasy about a person or even if a person wasn’t a very good friend to me. Deep down, I’d feel like I didn’t have time to scrutinize and I would look past red flags in favor of having someone I could call “friend”. I’d ignore the possibility that those people weren’t really “for me”.
I’d ignore disloyalty. I’d ignore blatant selfishness. I’d ignore the fact that these “friends” felt amused and comfortable in trying to hurt me. I’d forgive egregious betrayal and pat myself on the back for being such a forgiving person, all while ignoring my deep need for a friendship filled with love, acceptance, and reciprocation.
Over the past few years, all the fickle people fell off no matter how much I tried to hold on and the sadness I felt over those lost relationships ushered me into my current era of depressive isolation. Even though I feel more financially and emotionally stable than I’ve ever felt, the effort required to make real, new relationships is frightening and I don’t really try anymore.
Adulting compounds the issue, because having a family is always a good excuse to get out of the responsibility of the “effort”. This era of parasocial relationships easily disguises my fears, as it is very easy to seem personable and willing via social media.
I’ve been told that “obviously something is wrong with me” because I have no real, strong friendships and I’ve been told that I “need to take a look in the mirror” and figure out why nobody sticks around. That hurts me to core…because I’ve tried my damnedest to be an amazing, selfless friend to people in spite of their shortcomings and a few years ago, changing my entire life for the better exposed those fickle people as disloyal parasites.
My military family finally settled back down here in Colorado when I’d just turned 15. Right smack in the middle of my unavoidable teenage identity crisis. As the “new girl”, I’d form fickle relationships with people who already showed their true colors and I was impetuous in calling so many people “friend”. By the time I graduated high school, left for the military, and came back, I was knee deep in a romantic relationship with someone who shared this circle of high school friends.
Nine long, tumultuous years later, when that romantic relationship ended (abruptly and very messy), that circle of people made it known that their loyalty was to my ex. They made it known that the friendships I’d built with each person were a sham. Someone I felt the closest to even literally said, “I didn’t like how you handled your breakup so, no, we’re not going to be friends anymore.” That utterly blew my mind. Especially because even in the midst of her rocky romatic relationships and in spite of the fact that she was purposefully evil to her exes, I never once judged her for it or tried in any way to “punish” her for her mistakes. Reading that text message was a pivotal point for me. I didn’t see any point in fighting for my friendship, if I could even call it a friendship. I shut all the way down.
That was almost 3 years ago and since then, I’ve blossomed as a person. I’m thriving in my role as a mother, my relationship with my fiancé is flourishing, and I’m kicking ass in my business ventures. But, in spite of all my growth, I feel stuck. I want friends. I want to have confidantes. I want to feel close to people again, but I’m scarred. I hang out at home with my 9 month old and I don’t visit people. I don’t call people. I don’t show up.
Being a new mom made it easy to isolate myself and gave me acceptable excuses for avoiding the outside world. I never considered it as “postpartum depression” because I felt this way long before the strip told me I was carrying life inside me. The effort required to form meaningful relationships exhausts me because of how exhausting it is to be so suspicious and anxious about meeting new people. I’m tired of flimsy people and I’m unwilling to be vulnerable anymore. I know that my desired result requires me to be vulnerable but I don’t know how much more plutonic heartbreak I can handle.
So I’m just stuck. I don’t really know what it will take to encourage me to open up but my first instinct is to avoid everyone. I’m a very outgoing yet deeply introverted person. I prefer to be alone with my thoughts but, like any human would, I crave interaction. I smile, shake hands, and crack jokes to make it seem like I’m easy-going, but the truth is that every minute of every conversation with new people is agonizing because it’s so difficult to not concentrate on my fear that I’m, somehow not gonna cut it as this new person’s friend. It’s a fear that, somehow, despite this new person’s smiles and warmth, they won’t actually like me later down the road. It’s a deeply rooted fear that brings back all the anxiety of repeatedly “starting over” as a military kid. In its most basic form, it’s a fear of rejection. I’d rather stay home everyday with my little family and be filled with unconditional love, than go out into the world again only to find myself hurting and at the mercy of vulnerability.
I know, I’m stifling my own growth, I know. But I don’t know what it will it take for me to feel “friendly” and sociable again. I feel like I just don’t have the energy for the effort anymore. Sometimes I’m okay with that and sometimes it tortures me. It’s gonna take an extremely amazing friendship to overturn that paradigm for me, but then again, I may never be able to subject myself to a friendship enough to alter my schema of plutonic relationships in that way. All I can do is have patience with myself and other people. I’m tired though. So, hopefully I figure out how to navigate this aspect of myself before my time here on Earth comes to an end.
The Inspired Life 