Six hours of driving, up and back, for a day with friends that was kinda meh. All my interactions with more distant friends have been meh lately. I feel like I'm failing at basic conversation, I just can't seem to make a connection with anyone, even though we've had great times in the past. I'm not interested in cons anymore, or the friends I've made at them save one. I'm not sure if I'm interested in my role-playing group either, I feel so disconnected whenever we get together, I'm dreading another huge effort for a meh time next weekend. Last time...i felt things but my character was in trouble and it effected me too much, I felt attacked and alone. I couldn't shake that. What's wrong with me.
I couldn’t say for sure but if you’re not enjoying things that used to interest you, things that used to seem reasonable feel like too much effort, you’re feeling isolated, and when you do have a strong emotion it’s painful and upsetting, that kinda sounds like it might be depression?
Why am I back here again...crying, in a hotel room wishing that our relationship was better when it's not going to get better. It's never going to be anything better. She just can't or won't do it. Or something's wrong with me, and it warps my perceptions of what is happening. I'm supposed to be past the part where she is the most important person to me. It's supposed to be done, I already mourned the loss of what our friendship used to be. Why am I back here again, in this where it's all angst and tension and frustration and an incredible feeling of inadequacy. There's nothing to do, I wanted to talk badly and she didn't. I can't force her, I can't even say anything because I can just here her sigh over the internet if I said 'I really wanna talk' like I'm this huge burden. I feel like such a burden to her whenever we talk online. Like she doesn't want to be there. It's the same problems I always have. Always. The same thing over and over again. I only get the feeling that she appreciates me and wants me around in person. So.....its like for the vast majority of my life, she might as well not exist, she has no presence, I'm on my own except maybe once or twice a month when we visit face to face. I want this to change but I don't know how. She gets very uncomfortable when we talk about anything personal like that. My therapist said that I've got to move past her, she was my best friend...but that hinged on me never ever wanting to talk about flaws or weakness or anything personal at all because I hated myself and thought that my only value was in what I could create or how entertaining I could be. I need words that I'll never hear from her, like praise or just 'it's nice to see you again'. She never asks me to do anything except to leave her alone. I want to be needed. Our relationship feels so uneven because I'm always the one asking, 'let's spend time together, let's talk, can we do x now. I feel like I'm grasping at her like I have no right but I do it anyway because otherwise I get nothing. I feel like a pile of garbage every time I say 'I've had a rough time so could we hang out?' Or something like that. I've tried to talk to her about this. But last time it left me fixated and upset for days. I let those concerns fade, because nothing was going to change. If we just stopped, what would happen? I tried that and it was awful. I have a need to create things - stories characters worlds- with other people. We mesh together perfectly when we are doing that. I haven't found anyone who is better then her. We have a much deeper personal connection when we are pretending to be other people. It's fucked up, but constantly rping or worldbuilding is how our relationship has worked for the past 20 years. I thought it would be ok to just continue on with that stuff and not expect anything else from her. I...i don't think that's going to work. I don't know. It worked for a little while? But that let it be/keep my distance/it is what it is approach just ends up with me wanting to be really close again. I just get to feel intensely lonely, and like I don't have anyone who is very close to me or who I'm willing to open up to in a way that's not just screaming into the void. Just me, by myself, laying here. I don't have a most important person, that's all gone, I have to find someone on my own. A relationship where I don't feel like I have to hide behind pretend people to be a part of. It really really doesn't help that she found a new best friend a few years ago, an online rp partner who she talks to every day. I feel replaced with the added bonus of being jealous toward someone I've never met. Another thing I thought I was over that came back s couple weeks ago. I think all this midnight caterwalling happened because I was getting close..really close to telling her about some things about me, some of the mental shit I've been through, so she could understand a little why I'm like this? And of course this crept up on me through a character from our rp. I started poking at the subject....but she doesn't want to hear about it. I get that impression very strongly. Even though it's framed in the context of this character. She does t want to hear it about him, or me or any way. It's a small thing, but this is the pattern, always how it goes. And then my brain helpfully provides extra dialogue that wasn't typed by her like "drop the subject because it's weird and making me uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it." Because my brain is always ready to fill the silence of a big explanation that was never replied to with that kind of thing. Can I just...find someone I really mesh with, who can be as important to me as I am to them and who doesn't make me feel like a pile of garbage or a freak when I talk to them on the internet? Is this just impossible because I still have a lot of problems with self loathing? My brain is just wired to make ambiguous situations a million times worse then they actually are.
Then I remember that's actually me. Im the one the drops of the face of the world online. I'm the one that needs to be having a proactive day in order to check text messages. I'm the one who has to expend willpower to check social media and on bad days I'm outright afraid of my phone and won't even look at the screen because of all of the things I have to deal with in the form of notifications. I'm the one who didn't check the group chat for a week and missed where my friend organized everyone to go see pacific rim uprising. I'm amazed when it seems like every other person I communicate with answers messages promptly. I'm like some elusive swamp monster pretending to be a person.
So one of my friends might be a sexual predator? Wtf. She likes dating younger men who are passive, feminine, and naive. I was telling my therapist about her and she raised the possibility. I know for a fact that this person made out with someone at a con that she later learned was 15, that's why she always checks badges now. She's very much into romance and dating, s hes got problems, lots of problems. She gets caught up in her emotions and tries to go way too fast, the last two boyfriends she wanted to marry after a month or so. The last one she actually got engaged to, I think he was 19? She's 24. There's no denying that she's a hot mess, I'm ok with it. I wouldn't be ok with her preying on people... getting into ill-advised relationships isn't the same thing, I think? She really into shota and she always cosplays young characters. I've never seen her interact with a real kid, even at conventions. Idk, I get maybe why she has this youth fetish, she's one of those people who had to grow up way too fast and be a parent for her younger siblings because mom was a bipolar drug addict. I just don't know. I think she's just someone who has fantasies about being a kid, innocent, having friends and going on adventures? Idk, just trying to figure this out.
Sitting eating dinner by myself feeling like I don't belong anywhere. I'm too loud and inconsiderate for my friend's, I'm not decisive and I worry too much to be any fun at all when I'm in charge of my idk what they are exactly, my adopted nieces? It was on me to show them a good time at this unfamiliar event and I couldn't even show myself a good time. Ugh. When I get like this, I'm supposed to sleep because I'm weepy and tired, but I haven't even played a complete game yet at this gaming convention. I feel like a weird monster that can't relate to anyone. Like, do my friend's care about other aspects of my life besides role-playing? I just...dont know This is all irl stuff.
I'm afraid that I'm going to hiding in my room playing video games for the next week because of how disconnected I feel from everyone right now. Le sign
So I left the con early and crashed at my friend's house. The room smelled funny so i sprayed the hell out of it with febreeze. Ahh, that powdery chemical smell, like fresh mountain air. In retrospect, trying to cover up the exhaustion I felt all weekend with 10 cups of coffee was a really bad idea. To future me: caffeine always makes the paranoia worse, always. Don't do it. Don't make complicated plans when you are going to be dealing with exhaustion. Adding extra factors will not make you feel better. Keep it simple. Mood spirals can be avoided. I'm gonna hug my nakkidile plushie and think about robots being cute
I feel like a hot mess again. I feel clingy and like I've got no self control. Projecting my problems onto other people so hard that I don't know what's real. Desperate and lonely, like crushingly so. I'm just wallowing..... I think I've changed, but it's a lie. I'm still the same broken mess I was a year ago. Like there's a hole in my chest that nothing can fill. I had too much coffee today, it's making everything worse. I feel so fragile that I can't handle anything.., can't trust myself to be ok.
I feel like a used up paper towel, soggy and covered in grit. My only solution is to play video games until the feeling goes away, but I don't want to stay up all night.
Getting upset over things I can't change. Couldn't my parents have figured out that I needed to be taught how to socialize with other kids? I know that ADHD wasn't a thing back in the late 80s, but couldn't someone have told them that I needed help with conflict resolution and impulse control? I was in desperate need of help from second grade onward, but nobody noticed. I was sixteen or seventeen before I got the hang of compromising. https://childmind.org/article/helping-girls-with-adhd-make-friends/
Im still crushing hard on my best friend. I don't want anyone else. She's too young and she's already told me that she doesn't feel that way about me. She was gone for...seven months, and I thought I was done with it. Completely done, but no. When I'm around her, she's brash and affectionate, she makes me feel like I'm the most important person in the whole world. I feel like I'm special. I tell myself that she does this with everyone, but I can't believe it. I can't bring myself to believe that a romance is out of the question. I can't look at it as the dead end road it is. I need to stop thinking this way, but i don't want to. I want it to all be real. I want to love and be loved in return.
I straight up want to fight the entire world for not meeting my expectations. Hoping to rp some conflict tomorrow to get this out of my system. Something's been eating at me lately, I've got at least ten possibilities but no definitive answer. I just, fuck everything. Everything can fuck right off. Edit: Trying to have adult friendships, how do even? My best friend moved away and I got closer to her mom. I was trying to visit this friend's younger sisters at least once a month because I got really attached to them and they love me. I'm like their aunt. This family likes to joke around and tease each other a whole lot, more then I'm used to. The mom would get my best friend on discord when I was around and joke about how we were best friends now, it was a fun back and forth game until the mom told me later that she did that because my friend rarely answered her messages, but she always did when I was there? This revelation kinda fucked me up. I felt like I was being used as a pawn. Idk, the mom is up front about her feelings, I'm not used to this at all. I criticized her about something or another while I was visited the girls, and then Annika texts me later that her mom was sad and upset about what I said. It's such a simple, straightforward thing, but I got really angry for a hot second over that. I honestly dont know why all of this is bothering me so much. She didn't do anything wrong but it feels like she did? Or maybe I did something wrong? The whole thing blew over. But I always feel like I have to make an effort to make sure that our relationship is good whenever I'm around her. She's always praising and complimenting me. Not out of no where, usually when I do something like take the girls somewhere etc. I feel like a fraud when she does that too much. I hosted a birthday party for her because she was too busy to organize her own and she started writing angst poetry on facebook, I felt bad and thought we could have a fun day. It was fun? But I learned that she was the one that asked my best friend to come back for the whole summer, I think? Even though my friend has a really hard time living with either side of her family and can't afford her own place. I keep trying to make her a villain in my head, I don't know why. I keep thinking the worst of her. Like she relied on her daughter so much that she keeps trying to get her back? I don't even know.
I go days without feeling anything and then I feel everything at once. I still don't feel like I'm in control of my life. I'm just a spectator. All that stuff I was worrying about in the last post? It just evaporated when I went to visit them. I don't have any problem with the mom, we didn't even interact that much. All the bad feelings just disappeared like they'd never been real. It makes me wonder if anything I worry about is the thing that's actually bothering me. Monica and I are supposed to meet sunday. She gets migraines every week, so most nights she doesn't want to talk. I tried to talk to her about her dismissiveness again, when I send her a message she rarely responds, so I don't message her much. I'm not great about messages either, but always try to respond eventually. She ignored all my messages about suggestions on how we could change are interactions and said she'd deal with it later because she had a headache. That was last week, once again I feel ignored, or like I'm a nuisance. Both things. I get that she has health problems, I could be better about that. But I feel like we are completely non-entities in each other's lives except once every couple of weeks when we meet face to face. I wish she'd respond eventually, but nope, never. Not even an acknowledgement that she read anything. Like I'm forcing shit on her, like my messages are a burden and a chore that she'd rather ignore. I know, I know, half of the thread is me saying this stuff over and over. I feel surrounded by patterns that I can't break. I keep thinking that it's my fault, that I'm asking too much, that I should be more considerate. But it's like this friendship, an extremely important friendship is one sided and barely exists. It's so disheartening and frustrating. I just have to stop needing this relationship so much. And there's the thing where I'm happy, and really satisfied with how something social went, but I'll forget that it happened that way. I can't even figure out what I need because i don't remember things properly.
And while I'm bitching - that one friend who hates spoilers, but wants to come to the after movie get together even though they won't be seeing the movie, so we can see it but can't talk about it because of them? How does this make any sense.
While she was visiting, I finally felt comfortable enough to talk about my online friends with my sister. Everyone at the transformers stream, you guys are great. Cody, Verily, Hawk, Amber, Lunar- you guys are just the right mix of weird and cool, I'm glad we've been able to hang out every week for these past few years. When I was describing you all to my sister, I realized how proud I was of you. I was like "yes, these people are my friends and they are Awesome, we have a great time together." I can talk about movies, books and fandom all day, but I have a really hard time finding the right place to talk about my personal life, it's really nice when I'm able to.
Spoiler: Suicide mention, I'm being fucking dramatic just let me have this can't stop thinking about how great it would be to jump my car off a cliff. I'd go fast and fly for just a moment before dying horribly or being disabled for life. I don't want to irl but it's fun to fantasize about? I'm in such a fucked up mood right now. I'm so frustrated with being me. I get so upset about things sometimes, but no one else is upset by the same thing so I feel like a freak (this is irl stuff again, not forum related). Like these strong feelings don't actually matter because they seem to shift with the wind, even though I feel devastated at the time. I wish I could confide in someone about this bullshit, but I just can't do it without hearing about their stuff first, I feel too guilty and too paranoid about how I come across when I'm like this. Could i just stop being defensive and distrustful of a certain group of old friends. We've been tabletop gaming for years, I used to feel close to them, now I feel all prickly and I can't handle criticism from them anymore.
