True Friends Stab You In the Front

My worries about being friendless dominate my thoughts.
I do have friends. I just see them very rarely. Or they don't live near me.
But I have lost friends in the last year, two years that I miss greatly and feel that I will never get them back. Our lives have moved on. And often, I feel wronged, feel abandoned, so I don't make the effort to reach out.
Gosh. Such a victim complex. Is there a specific word for that?

What I realised recently is that actually I am not a good friend. I'm terrible at texting back, at communicating, at organising get togethers or catch ups.
I've never been one of those people. I have always felt as though I am intruding on other people's lives. That, if they wanted to see me, they'd let me know, and that I shouldn't impose myself on them.

I think I used to be a good friend. I used to listen much more, and definitely better. I used to be an agony aunt and the peacemaker of a group.
I used to defend my friends, usually male friends, and my right to have them against the insecurity of boyfriends. No man will ever make me choose them over my friends. Not as long as I have friends.

Not having a multitude of friends means I live a lot in my head. Or escape into other worlds. Reading, television, film, games. A crutch. An enjoyable crutch.

I keep coming across articles that attributes a lack of satisfying social life or interaction with other people, particularly friends, to depression and lack of well-being.

I lack well-being. But I need to focus on the other aspects of well-being, and when I have the opportunities to interact with people, with the friends I do have, I will make the most of them.
And the pain of loss? I'll focus on building those walls. I used to be better at that, too.

I do not want to end up like Liz Jones. I will undoubtedly become a crazy old cat-lady. But my friends can come round and cuddle with my cats when their other halves are allergic.


"You often worry about being alone?"
"I worry about hurting. Being alone comes with a dull ache, doesn't it?"


Yes it does. A bit like my headache, actually.



Update: I feel like I have written this very well, so if anyone is offended they must please tell me, and I'll try to explain. I'm not sure I've done very well explaining myself here.

We Need To Talk

A reminder popped up on my dad's Outlook last night saying "wedding anniversary". It was 23 hours overdue, and nearly 2 years redundant.

What I've found in the past 2 years since my parents separated, is that on occasion we feel the need to abbreviate the truth, or at least only relate parts of the truth because we feel it is important to protect others.  And that actually we should talk more honestly and openly.

My mother hid the truth about her trips to Cambridge for months. She wasn't escaping our house to see a friend. She was escaping our house to see her new boyfriend.

When my sister and I learned the truth, we then had to keep this from our father. We'd say mum was gone away for the weekend but we weren't sure where.

It turns out my father knew before we did. A bit more honesty could have saved us all a bit of aggravation and guilt.

The way my sister talks about her depression and ongoing struggle on her blog is very inspirational to me. Talking about mental health is hard enough, even in general terms. Talking about overdoses is something I never would have thought possible in our family. My mental health issues when I was younger were only really talked about inside therapy sessions. I don't remember sitting down with my family and talking to them about it, about what had happened.

But the day after my sister's overdose was Mother's Day, and though my mother was out of the country, we went to my grandparents house and had lunch with them and my uncle. And throughout the day we all discussed my sister's action, with her, without her, and I learnt a great deal more about my family's mental health history. We were more honest and open with each other. We communicated.

Sometimes we find it very hard to communicate. Sometimes we can't find the words, sometimes we hold back in fear of the reaction our words will invoke. I read in this week's Big Issue that a vendor who had been featured in an issue had seen sales decrease, and a potential reason was that readers (and therefore buyers) had learned he had a criminal record. This man deserves to be praised for his honesty, not punished for it.

Sometimes we just think our communication will be futile. And no one wants to do something that's futile.

Perhaps we should all be a bit more honest, a bit more open, perhaps if we communicated more like this then we would learn so much.

Though sometimes the best way to communicate something is by saying nothing.