Selfish
So fucking selfish.
It probably seems like I'm a whole lot of down on myself in this blog. I write out all these epiphanies where I realize I've been an asshole about something or other for most of my life, and I castigate myself for being a dick.
But that's not who I am in day to day life. I like myself, mayhap a bit too much. I expect the best of myself, I see myself through rose colored glasses, and it takes a whole lot of thinking to get me to admit to myself that there are things genuinely wrong with me.
It feels like my 30s have been all about figuring out what's genuinely wrong with me. I'm kind of ok with that. I spent my 20s figuring out what was right, so I'm hoping I'll spend my 40s just being happy.
After about 3 years of constant thinking (I'm not kidding. This has taken me 3 years. It's pathetic) about the friendships I've lost over the years, I've come to the conclusion that I was just a goddamn horrible friend. I had my moments of goodness. But I didn't have anything to give to sustain a truly good, healthy friendship. I was drawn to people who needed so much from me, and I gave it for a time. And then I yanked it away summarily, because I couldn't handle it anymore. And I couldn't handle it anymore not because I was so selfless that I just gave it all away. No, I couldn't handle it anymore because I got sick of dealing with the day to day realities of being friends with diamonds. Those people who've been crushed for so long under piles of shit that they come out into their adulthood as chemically enhanced carbon.
These diamonds are difficult friends. They need more than most, and if you're someone with no boundaries or barriers in place to need, they will drain you dry and wonder where you've blown away to without ever meaning to. But, with the boundaries and barriers, they are these bright, shining beacons of what's right in this world. They are examples of what happens to the human spirit when darkness isn't allowed to have its way.
That sounds all melodramatic and shit. It kind of is. But it's also true. They are amazing people. And wonderful friends. If you're capable of being a wonderful friend in return. Being a wonderful friend in return involves only giving as much as you have to give, always keeping something in reserve for yourself, always making sure that you stay healthy too. It involves giving what they really need, not what you think they need. What they really need is the same as what any other healthy relationship needs to survive. Love, respect, vulnerability, advice giving, advice receiving. Basic tenants of friendship.
Things that I've never truly been capable of giving.
I don't know why, exactly. But this visit to my family last month highlighted some very basic issues for me.
1 - I grew up in a religion that encouraged you to completely distance yourself from the rest of the world. For me, that meant loving my family, and that's it. No other friends were real, because no other friends were truly trustworthy.
2 - I come from a family of fucked emotionally retarded incredibly intelligent idiots. Not a one of them is capable of maintaining a truly healthy friendship except the youngest. (I write too much negative about my family. The positive is there, and glowing bright. But the negative is what I have to focus on for now, to figure this shit out inside myself.)
3 - I have hidden myself away completely from love. And friendship is nothing without love.
4 - I am inherently lazy, and have been for a very long time. My entire family is lazy when it comes to relationships, but I should have learned better long before now.
So. I reread these emails tonight from my 2 former closest female friends. One friendship ended spectacularly, with a bang that involved a man and a whole lot of rage and unresolved bullshit. The other ended with a whimper, with a year of me avoiding her company passive aggressively, after a couple years of me being miserable in our friendship, and an email from her to me laying it on the line.
Both of these email exchanges with these two different women come down to the same thing. I ruined our friendship.
In my mind, they had. For years, that's what I thought. I acknowledged I had some blame too, of course. But it came down to them ruining everything by expecting from me what I wasn't able to give. In the case of the first one, she expected me to understand her desire for me to never even think about fucking one of her exs (it's more complex than that, but it boils down to me respecting her arbitrary boundaries). In the case of the second, she expected me to put up with her emotional upheaval for years without any form of reciprocation (that I recognized).
I saw their unreasonableness, and it just gave me the excuse I needed to not have to deal with being their friend anymore.
I still see their unreasonableness. Reading back through those emails, and my responses to them, I still feel right about most of what I said.
But here's where my problem starts. Because, regardless of how right I was in the moment, I was completely to blame in the long run. I created these situations, I helped set the template for how they'd react to me, and then when they reacted as they inevitably were going to, I had my legitimate reasons to walk away.
I didn't do this like a puppet master manipulating strings and reality. They're far too strong for that to be the case. I didn't create those situations on purpose, as a sneaky way to get out of taxing friendships.
I was just as confused as they were, in the end. I didn't see my fingers pulling the strings, didn't notice each little action I was taking that would create this reality that would let me be selfish.
I am very, very good at reading people. And I'm very, very good at ignoring the darkness inside me while it wreaks its merry havoc on my world. This combination of traits allows me to be incredibly selfish in my goals. I want to learn more about men, so I learn more about men. In the mean time creating heartbreak and sadness around me. I wanted to be friends with shiny people who'd been hurt too often to be trusting, so I became the most trustworthy person imaginable. And I really was that person. Until suddenly I wasn't.
That was a theme in both of their emails. That change. It was sudden, and unexpected, and so very cruel. I adopted a personality that they needed so completely, and then, when I got sick of it, I just stopped.
I didn't understand that I was doing this. To me, I was just being me, just being true to myself. But looking back at my behavior, I can see the cracks. I can see the reality of me starting to get sick of the relationships I spent so much time creating, and the passive aggressive bullshit I used to mask those cracks. I never really saw how responsible I was for my own behavior, and others responses to that behavior, until now. 3 years later.
I'm very sick of being selfish. Ironically (or not, depending on your school of ironic definition), for selfish reasons. I want good friendships. I want healthy relationships. I want more than what I have now, and I want to be able to GIVE finally. Really give. Not just the shallow reservoir I keep handy for all my interactions with other humans. I want to delve deep, I want to open the gates and just let myself out. I don't want to be extreme about it, or give it to people who won't help me fill it back up. But I want MORE. And less selfishness. I don't know how to get rid of it. It's a survival mechanism that's got a stranglehold on my sense of self preservation.
I feel like I should start by apologizing to those hurt by my past behavior. It's quite a few people, and will be a number of emails.
Emails I'm going to hate composing, because I don't want to sound like I'm asking for forgiveness and reconnection. I just want to acknowledge my part in things in a way I haven't been able to before, and to apologize for adding to their stress, sadness, unhappiness, what have you. That's a hard line to tread.
It probably seems like I'm a whole lot of down on myself in this blog. I write out all these epiphanies where I realize I've been an asshole about something or other for most of my life, and I castigate myself for being a dick.
But that's not who I am in day to day life. I like myself, mayhap a bit too much. I expect the best of myself, I see myself through rose colored glasses, and it takes a whole lot of thinking to get me to admit to myself that there are things genuinely wrong with me.
It feels like my 30s have been all about figuring out what's genuinely wrong with me. I'm kind of ok with that. I spent my 20s figuring out what was right, so I'm hoping I'll spend my 40s just being happy.
After about 3 years of constant thinking (I'm not kidding. This has taken me 3 years. It's pathetic) about the friendships I've lost over the years, I've come to the conclusion that I was just a goddamn horrible friend. I had my moments of goodness. But I didn't have anything to give to sustain a truly good, healthy friendship. I was drawn to people who needed so much from me, and I gave it for a time. And then I yanked it away summarily, because I couldn't handle it anymore. And I couldn't handle it anymore not because I was so selfless that I just gave it all away. No, I couldn't handle it anymore because I got sick of dealing with the day to day realities of being friends with diamonds. Those people who've been crushed for so long under piles of shit that they come out into their adulthood as chemically enhanced carbon.
These diamonds are difficult friends. They need more than most, and if you're someone with no boundaries or barriers in place to need, they will drain you dry and wonder where you've blown away to without ever meaning to. But, with the boundaries and barriers, they are these bright, shining beacons of what's right in this world. They are examples of what happens to the human spirit when darkness isn't allowed to have its way.
That sounds all melodramatic and shit. It kind of is. But it's also true. They are amazing people. And wonderful friends. If you're capable of being a wonderful friend in return. Being a wonderful friend in return involves only giving as much as you have to give, always keeping something in reserve for yourself, always making sure that you stay healthy too. It involves giving what they really need, not what you think they need. What they really need is the same as what any other healthy relationship needs to survive. Love, respect, vulnerability, advice giving, advice receiving. Basic tenants of friendship.
Things that I've never truly been capable of giving.
I don't know why, exactly. But this visit to my family last month highlighted some very basic issues for me.
1 - I grew up in a religion that encouraged you to completely distance yourself from the rest of the world. For me, that meant loving my family, and that's it. No other friends were real, because no other friends were truly trustworthy.
2 - I come from a family of fucked emotionally retarded incredibly intelligent idiots. Not a one of them is capable of maintaining a truly healthy friendship except the youngest. (I write too much negative about my family. The positive is there, and glowing bright. But the negative is what I have to focus on for now, to figure this shit out inside myself.)
3 - I have hidden myself away completely from love. And friendship is nothing without love.
4 - I am inherently lazy, and have been for a very long time. My entire family is lazy when it comes to relationships, but I should have learned better long before now.
So. I reread these emails tonight from my 2 former closest female friends. One friendship ended spectacularly, with a bang that involved a man and a whole lot of rage and unresolved bullshit. The other ended with a whimper, with a year of me avoiding her company passive aggressively, after a couple years of me being miserable in our friendship, and an email from her to me laying it on the line.
Both of these email exchanges with these two different women come down to the same thing. I ruined our friendship.
In my mind, they had. For years, that's what I thought. I acknowledged I had some blame too, of course. But it came down to them ruining everything by expecting from me what I wasn't able to give. In the case of the first one, she expected me to understand her desire for me to never even think about fucking one of her exs (it's more complex than that, but it boils down to me respecting her arbitrary boundaries). In the case of the second, she expected me to put up with her emotional upheaval for years without any form of reciprocation (that I recognized).
I saw their unreasonableness, and it just gave me the excuse I needed to not have to deal with being their friend anymore.
I still see their unreasonableness. Reading back through those emails, and my responses to them, I still feel right about most of what I said.
But here's where my problem starts. Because, regardless of how right I was in the moment, I was completely to blame in the long run. I created these situations, I helped set the template for how they'd react to me, and then when they reacted as they inevitably were going to, I had my legitimate reasons to walk away.
I didn't do this like a puppet master manipulating strings and reality. They're far too strong for that to be the case. I didn't create those situations on purpose, as a sneaky way to get out of taxing friendships.
I was just as confused as they were, in the end. I didn't see my fingers pulling the strings, didn't notice each little action I was taking that would create this reality that would let me be selfish.
I am very, very good at reading people. And I'm very, very good at ignoring the darkness inside me while it wreaks its merry havoc on my world. This combination of traits allows me to be incredibly selfish in my goals. I want to learn more about men, so I learn more about men. In the mean time creating heartbreak and sadness around me. I wanted to be friends with shiny people who'd been hurt too often to be trusting, so I became the most trustworthy person imaginable. And I really was that person. Until suddenly I wasn't.
That was a theme in both of their emails. That change. It was sudden, and unexpected, and so very cruel. I adopted a personality that they needed so completely, and then, when I got sick of it, I just stopped.
I didn't understand that I was doing this. To me, I was just being me, just being true to myself. But looking back at my behavior, I can see the cracks. I can see the reality of me starting to get sick of the relationships I spent so much time creating, and the passive aggressive bullshit I used to mask those cracks. I never really saw how responsible I was for my own behavior, and others responses to that behavior, until now. 3 years later.
I'm very sick of being selfish. Ironically (or not, depending on your school of ironic definition), for selfish reasons. I want good friendships. I want healthy relationships. I want more than what I have now, and I want to be able to GIVE finally. Really give. Not just the shallow reservoir I keep handy for all my interactions with other humans. I want to delve deep, I want to open the gates and just let myself out. I don't want to be extreme about it, or give it to people who won't help me fill it back up. But I want MORE. And less selfishness. I don't know how to get rid of it. It's a survival mechanism that's got a stranglehold on my sense of self preservation.
I feel like I should start by apologizing to those hurt by my past behavior. It's quite a few people, and will be a number of emails.
Emails I'm going to hate composing, because I don't want to sound like I'm asking for forgiveness and reconnection. I just want to acknowledge my part in things in a way I haven't been able to before, and to apologize for adding to their stress, sadness, unhappiness, what have you. That's a hard line to tread.
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