It’s strongly looking like this will be the first year absolutely nobody will notice/remember my birthday…including my one online friend. If she’s my friend anymore.
I’ll make it clear from the start that if this is so, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. My stupid ****ing anxiety/avoidance. Like always.
She’s literally the only friend, online or off, I’ve managed to keep for more than several years. Even the best/closest friendship I ever had IRL lasted merely several years before she moved away and lost interest in keeping in touch. I’m just…not wanted. And by now, I understand. I’m a s*** friend. I USED to try harder, to be there for people, to reciprocate. I USED to be a halfway-decent friend, and back then, I honestly couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to keep in touch with me. I tried so hard to be good, to be kind and supportive, to show interest. I just never got it in return. No matter how much I had in common with a person or how much even they claimed they wanted to be friends with me. I could share SO MANY stories of what started out as promising friendships, which, as soon as I got my hopes up, promptly went wrong. I’ll spare you though, nobody wants to read any of this. The main reason I have this journal is because literally nobody anywhere else wants to hear me so I have absolutely nobody to talk to…possibly now including my one friend.
So…as time went on, and I was ignored or outright rejected by potential friend after friend after friend…I grew suspicious, paranoid, distrusting. At first, I assumed the problem was not me per se, but perhaps I was merely doing something wrong. I would ask what I had done and how I could fix the situation. I would get a combination of “Oh, you did nothing wrong, I’m just busy, but I’ll get back to you, I promise” (followed by silence) or else “What makes you think you’re so important that I’d spdrop everything just to reply to you? I have a life, you know. I have important things to deal with, and you don’t make the cut. Get over yourself!”
So…outright asking what I’d done wrong (if anything–I know I’m clingy and insecure, but I never, EVER, demanded that someone drop everything–or even one thing–for me, I was always patient and waited for WEEKS/MONTHS for a response while watching these “friends” post online to all their other friends yet never respond to me–by now, I believe I didn’t do anything wrong aside from continue to believe/hope these people were my friends, sap that I was) didn’t work…I tried harder, learning from these bad experiences, to do better next time, to wait longer to hear back, to be more patient and less demanding (bull**** that I was even “demanding” in the first place when all I wanted was a reply now and then, but this happened SO MANY times that I honestly believed I was the problem, I was the one being a sucky friend merely expecting a reply now and then)…but that didn’t work either. Nothing I did worked. I tried everything, I even asked my psychologist at the time what could I do better to make a friend and the suggestions she gave were all the things I’d tried already. (Yet even she suggested I was still doing it wrong. Even after TWO–yes, TWO–other clients of hers who agreed to get in touch with me for possible socializing/friendship both STOOD ME UP, after I held up EVERY part of the arrangement on MY end, well, it must have been my fault, either for not trying hard enough–bull****, considering that I’D DONE ALL THE WORK to get us in touch and THEY failed to respond–or for expecting too much. EXPECTING TOO MUCH, just expecting the other party to respond. Psychologist got tired of hearing how hurt I was when my fears of rejection were justified right in front of her eyes, and demanded I not bring it up anymore. She also refused to offer further suggestions because, well obviously, I liked being alone and miserable. Soon after she rejected me as a client as well and I haven’t had access to mental health support since. That’s another story.)
I started going through phases of giving up and completely avoiding friendships, and getting bursts of hope and trying extra hard. Oh God I was so stupid. Time after time, my hopes were just crushed, same as before. There were the people who seemed super friendly and enthusiastic to make friends with me and then I never heard from them again, and there were the people I actually DID seem to become tentative friends with, yet then I’d stop hearing from them, and if I dared to try to reach out to them again, I’d get lambasted as an awful, selfish b**** for daring to think I was worth their time. One or the other, this is the reaction I always elicited from others. The ones who didn’t simply vanish from the Internet, I’d see them still communicating with others, still soliciting friendship/contact with others. (At least three times, probably more, I found somebody I’d reached out to, who responded favorably but then ignored me, posting again after the rejection, asking for yet more people to respond to them. Two of those people outright told me, when I reached out to them again, that I wasn’t good/important enough to be their friend and they had no time for me (even while they were seeking yet more friends). The third never responded.)
This is when I learned. The problem IS me. Not because I’m doing something wrong–at least, my methods of trying to befriend others weren’t what was wrong. What was wrong was ME, period. I’m not meant to have friends. I realized I’m just a s***ty person, unnecessary, and no matter how hard I try, how good or kind or interested I try to be, it won’t matter. There’s no way around it. I’m not a good friend and nobody will ever want me.
So…I began to avoid. I stopped reaching out, stopped trying. Even when I came across the rare person who piqued my interest or struck a chord, I held back. When I came across a sad, lonely person wanting somebody to just reach out to them, I went on my way without making my presence known (such people always, ALWAYS, got at least a few other helpful souls responding to them, unlike me when I posted similar cries for help–they didn’t need me). And on the exceptionally rare occasions when somebody else reached out to me, I’d sometimes reply once, to at least acknowledge them and not be a total b****, but I never maintained a conversation or tried harder than that. I sometimes MEANT to communicate, and beat myself up mentally for failing, but in the back of my mind I knew it was for the best. Those people would inevitably end up rejecting me anyway. Better to just avoid friendship entirely. I was too tired and discouraged to try anymore.
Result…I became the person who rejected first, who failed to reciprocate. Yes, I hated becoming the very type of person who repeatedly hurt me so badly. But it was for the best. Everyone else was going to do it, anyway. And who am I to think that my rejection/ignoring of others hurts them in the least? They themselves told me. I’m not important enough. I’ll never make the cut as someone’s friend.
…
So…what does my one, actual online friend…my one friend, period…have to do with all this…?
She was the ONE exception in all this. The only one, in twenty years. The ONLY person who kept responding, kept considering me worthwhile, kept putting up with/accepting my avoidance without turning me away or falling silent for good. (She was also the only online friend I ever met in person, twice.) She would wait for me to reply instead of reaching out first, including during very long silences on my part, but that was probably because she thought to do otherwise might make my anxiety worse, and maybe she was right. (I desperately want people to reach out to me, yet when they do I’m terrified…I can’t win.) But whenever I finally summoned the guts to write to her, she would reply. Sometimes it’d take her a bit, because she has a family and a job, but she always did. And even if she was busy she NEVER used the “You’re not important enough for me to spend any time on you” line that my other “friends” had used.
The two times she would reach out to me first were the holidays, and my birthday. She would send a card and gift. Same with me, I’d send her a card and gift for her birthday and holidays. In her case, the two fall very close together and I always have trouble remembering the exact date but I still always reach out.
I wish I could say I was nearly as good replying to general e-mails…but I’m nowhere close. After my surgery (which took place around her birthday/holidays), my anxiety became so bad I went over a year without responding to her. -_- I hated myself so much by the time I reached back out to send her a gift. I was fully prepared to never hear from her again, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. But she replied. Wasn’t mad (well, didn’t say so, at least), friendly as ever, just as I’d last left her. And I was SO relieved. I told myself, I INSISTED, that I had to try harder to keep in touch, had to do better. Many times I’d expected something to be the end of our friendship, for this to be the time I never heard back, because that was how it had been with literally EVERY. SINGLE. OTHER person I’d tried to befriend in my life. There’s ALWAYS a point at which friends, no matter how close, want nothing more to do with me, and she’d lasted long past that point. Yet she always replied. If she was still willing to consider a s***ty person like me a friend after a YEAR of silence, surely that meant I had nothing to feel anxious about, no reason to avoid her anymore or keep expecting the worst…?
Well…I guess there’s just too much damage done…and even her so-far unwavering friendship couldn’t fix me. No matter how hard I tried, how much I vowed to be a better friend, the friend she deserves, I could never hold up to it. I really did intend to reply more timely. And I think maybe I sent her one timely response. But this was around last holidays and then…I avoided her again. For months. Only several days ago, perhaps, did I finally write, to catch up a bit and send her a photo card I’d made of a recent trip I took (to a location we’d visited together, a place of great significance to me which I haven’t been able to visit for years prior to my surgery and then after)…I used to send her those years ago, when I used to take pictures more often. I intended this gesture to have some personal meaning and act sort of like an apology without me actually apologizing, since 1) people get angry when I apologize to them, and 2) my apologies are worthless anyway, since I never manage to fix what I’m doing wrong. She’d put up with my silence for a year before; this hadn’t been quite a year yet, maybe I had no reason to fear that this time, she wouldn’t respond…?
I’m starting to believe now that I found the limit and I pushed it too far (unintentionally–I never meant to “test” our friendship, though I did often wonder what would be its limit, since EVERY friendship of mine has had a very short limit, why would this be any different). Because tomorrow is my birthday, and I haven’t heard from her yet.
I’d heard from her by now every other year, including last year, and that year of silence on my part. Which is why this is looking like the limit of what she’d put up with. Every friendship must have one. I mean, look how hurt I was every time somebody neglected to respond to me. Of course she would feel hurt, and get fed up, after enough times of not hearing from me for months. (I cringe typing that–like why think I’m THAT important that my silence affects anyone else?–but she stuck by me this long, surely that means I meant something to her?) Maybe she could forgive one exceedingly long silence…but not two. Maybe that’s her limit.
And I can’t blame her, can’t be angry or upset with anyone but myself this time. Maybe it’s not entirely my fault that I’ve become so distrusting and bitter and avoidant and broken, when I tried so hard so many times to be a good friend. But it IS entirely my fault that I didn’t try hard enough to be the good friend that she deserved. I really, really did intend to try so much harder, to put even half the effort into it as she did. But I failed, over and over. Everybody has their limit, and I went way past hers. If anything, she gave me too many chances, and I grew complacent in hoping she’d always be there. Of course friends eventually stop being there, if you’re never there for them.
I think we just befriended each other too late for her friendship to be the cure I’d hoped it would be. Or perhaps I should’ve just stopped trying to reach out to other people during our friendship, shouldn’t have tried to make other friends besides her, which further damaged my ability to trust. I only did so because it’s not healthy to invest all your energy into one friendship, to depend on one person for all your social interaction–a lot of my avoidance of her has been me not wanting to overwhelm her with all my crap, because, having no therapist or family or coworkers or boyfriend or other friends or even online community anymore to share my problems with, she would be on the receiving end of ALL of that. And if anything kills a friendship faster than prolonged silence, it’s oversharing your problems. And I’ve learned the hard way that people don’t want to hear the uncondensed version of the GOOD stuff in my life, either. So, there was a LOT I never shared with her, for the sole reason that she was my only friend and I had to walk a very delicate line of not overwhelming her or underwhelming her. I thought I should try to make other friends to carry bits of my burden, rather than one carrying the whole. Unfortunately, that never worked out–backfired, even, by eroding my trust and hope, including my ability to trust the one friend I DID have–plus I ended up responding too little rather than too much. I blew it.
But, yes…I think also she just tried too late, when I was too far broken for even her unwavering friendship to help me enough. Maybe if we’d become friends a few years earlier, it would’ve made a difference. But that didn’t happen and it’s not her fault, probably not even my fault. It’s hard to say this, with how everyone my entire life has blamed me for my lack of friends, but I don’t really believe it’s my fault for being broken; not unless I was just born defective. I really did try, all those times.
THIS possibly broken friendship is my fault, though. She gave me chance after chance after chance. I always expected the next chance to be the last. Well, maybe this is what I deserve, at last. I was a s*** friend when she deserved far better. The only thing she did wrong was thinking I might be worth her trouble. I always wondered, why she gave me a chance in the first place, when no one else could ever stand me. I took her for granted and that’s solely on me.
I wish I would have done things differently. -_- She was all I had left. Literally–I have nobody on Earth to turn to now. But even if I never hear back from her,even if this is really the end, I can’t say in all honestly that I WOULD have done better, even knowing what I know now. I failed to maintain our friendship after my year of silence. Why would I do any better the next time, or the next? I’ve always been a s***ty friend.
I guess if tomorrow passes in silence I’ll know. I’ll still hold out hope that maybe she’s busy, or traveling, or forgot, and I’ll be grateful even if I hear from her late, since I sure don’t deserve it. But soon I’ll know and I shouldn’t be surprised or blame anyone other than myself if I’m the one left hanging this time.
I’m sorry I was such a lousy friend, T. :(
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