#but sam works hard and treats me really well so ill bend over backwards for him when i can

[tealfruit]

it's not actually difficult to get me to work hard, or maybe not hard but generally well at least, all you have to do is be a decent person who does their own job and treat me and others with respect and I will be ride or die for you

[meditationsofanoblesponge]

A Lesson

Alright so I’m gonna fuck y’all up with some truth. 

There are many lessons in life you will learn the hard way. There’s no getting around it. But what you take from that lesson and how you choose to move forward is what matters.

As like... three of you know (those who actually read this shit blog), I went through a really rough patch last summer involving a friend so near and dear to me. Long story short, I was desperate for friendship to the point of self-sabotage. My therapist helped me understand that, finally, after 6 sessions with her (bless her).

When this friend, (whom I will refer to as Sam* for the sake of keeping things a bit more private) came into my life, I was incredibly lonely, lost, and depressed. She found me, literally and figuratively. Sam* got to know what makes me tick, what makes me sad, what makes me angry, what makes me smile. We did EVERYTHING together. She was (and still is) the most amazing person I have ever known. But the thing was/is, I started to get real codependent. 

CODEPENDENCYˌkōdəˈpendənsē/: noun excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically a partner who requires support due to an illness or addiction.

You see, she had seen some shit throughout her life. She had dealt with emotional abuse, physical abuse, growing up on the shit side of the economy. I understood the emotional abuse and economical status. We had this mutual understanding of just how shitty the world could be. Now, this was a good thing at the time. But something sort of... snapped for me.

About one year into this incredible friendship, I began to get protective of Sam*. I hated her boyfriend at the time because he was so demanding of her time and energy. He belittled her and made her feel less than. I didn’t like how her stepmom treated her, and I wasn’t happy with her older sister making Sam* drop the world to fix her mistakes all the time. Sam* was too powerful, too independent of a person to be dealing with such matters, but she did it with grace and forgiveness. But my protective nature never ceased. 

My therapist asked me why I feel compelled to help people, even when it harms me in the end. I’ll be honest, I do it because, to me, others matter way more than me. I could give a shit less about myself or my well being. As long as those I love are happy and healthy, then I may be at peace. But the thing is, I never find peace when I do that. In fact, I spend more time worrying about other people’s lives without taking into consideration that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I’m not needed. Maybe me helping could simply come in the form of the generalized gestures we’re all used to. “If you need anything, call me.” Or “ Would you like me to help you?”

I would bend of over backwards and land in the splits for Sam* fully expecting praise and thank you’s. But instead, I would get backlash and frustration. It hurt me deeply, too. Most nights, I would spend hours racking my brain for ideas on how to make Sam’s* life easier. Gifts, coffees, long letters and money. Everything I had, every ounce of myself would go to Sam*. At first, she was very grateful. She knew my love language was giving. But after awhile, it wasn’t working. 

The last gift I attempted to give her were concert tickets to a music festival we had discussed wanting to go to. My thought on that one was that she wouldn’t have to worry about paying for it because money was tight. I had just graduated and used that money I earned to buy these tickets. On her graduation day, I sent her a message saying that I got the tickets for her as a gift, and I heard nothing back from her. That’s when I hit an incredible, iron wall of gutwrenching anxiety and depression. A thousand questions and cries blew out of my brain and I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know why she wouldn’t respond, or say thank you, fuck you, whatever. There’s nothing more agonizing than an important message going unanswered. 

Three weeks passed after my gift was given, and I had lost 15 pounds through stress alone. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to eat, and I cried for hours on end. What hurt me the most had nothing to do with her lack of response about concert tickets, but her lack of response to me, period. Where had our friendship gone so wrong that not replying to your best friend was considered okay? What on earth had I done to deserve such treatment? What did I say?? What did I need to fucking do to fix this situation?

It has been a little less than a year since this happened. And since then, it has taken A LOT of therapy, binge drinking, and sobbing breakdowns and anxiety attacks to get through it. I have reflected on it so much that it’s almost like clockwork. I’ll be in the happiest of moods, then suddenly I want to grab my head and rip it off. You wanna know what I did wrong? The life lesson I had to learn the hard way? Giving your whole self to someone who didn’t ask for it is a perfect way to destroy something good. You may be overstepping boundaries, stomping on their pride, or not allowing that person to forge their own path to self-help. Don’t ever assume that by you “helping” someone, that they actually wanted the help. Being a “giver” isn’t a bad thing. My therapist calls it God’s gift to me. I’m not ashamed of my gift, either. No, my shame lies in the fact that I was so pushy and forceful in my giving nature that I ruined a friendship that I may never have again. I was so scared to lose someone I loved, that I got desperate and needy, and that isn’t very becoming.

The loss of a friendship that means so much to you is... well it’s fucking awful. I know I’m not alone when it comes to this fact of life. But goddamn I am so angry and upset with myself. I hate myself so much for taking such a good thing and blasting it to pieces. My therapist told me that I need to forgive myself, and that this situation was a two-way street. Not all of the guilt needs to rest in my hands because “she could have communicated with you better”. Yeah, I guess. But in the end, I fucked it all up. Gone are the days of late-night McDonald’s runs, sitting in parking lots talking about our fears and triumphs, and going to concerts in a drunken stupor.  Now, I have an awkward, stagnant friendship with someone I once loved so much that is only stabilized through tagging each other in Facebook Memories and silly music videos. 

Someday, I hope we do get coffee so that I can tell her all of this. I know she’ll listen, all in due time. But for now, I truck on and pretend that I am getting better. And I am really good at pretending.