My lack of real friends and closeness with others is bothering me and has been for over a week. I got triggered last week by someone I consider a friend (but who clearly doesn’t feel the same way about me) who I knew was sweeping me aside. You can tell what’s going on from text messages can’t you? It’s weird, but you can literally read the energy of the situation. I’ve known her for nearly 5 years, older lady, around my mum’s age. I’ve stayed at her house a number of times (she’s not local to me) and each time I’ve visited (which is getting less frequent) we’ve had a marvellous time chatting and eating (eating is her favourite hobby….meaowww). Lately, I’ve been getting the same bullshit from her that she’s been so busy and that she typed out a message months ago but forgot to press send or got distracted from sending it so it’s been sitting on her phone since then – what a fucking insult! She’s said that to me on more than one occasion. Perhaps she forgets that it’s the excuse she’s used before. That’s the thing about excuses use it more than once and you ferret yourself out as a bit of bob cryer (that’s liar if you don’t know your cockney rhyming slang). Good job I’m keeping track of the score. I never said it was ok (because it’s bloody well not ok) but I did finish the short chat to say let’s arrange an evening to talk over the phone and catch up on what’s been happening. Glad I didn’t hold my fucking breath cuz she still hasn’t replied…and then I began to spiral into another-one-bites-the-dust…..
That was my recent trigger and it’s got me thinking about my life that, up until now (at 49 and a half) has been constantly unconstant when it comes to reliable, close and lasting friendships. I still find myself starkly friend-less and with no significant other in my life (I avoid the ‘S’ word label). I just don’t have many close people in my life who I feel value me; maybe I push them away too quickly with the neediness and the over-compensation? Perhaps if I wasn’t so needy then I wouldn’t be so easily discarded by others.
(Discard. Interesting word. I wonder why I’ve used that word. I don’t edit these posts this is how they come out- raw and unedited).
We discard rubbish don’t we? Maybe there’s a big part of me that doesn’t value herself? Perhaps that’s what it is. If I valued myself more and thought more of myself (not in a egotistical self-centric way) then I wouldn’t leave myself open to abuse of any kind? Things that are discarded and swept aside are generally useless, of no value. But then that would tie in with the abandoned child thinking she was abandoned because she was of no value.
That feeling of being discarded is compounded when so called friends cut you out of their life overnight over minor issues. You know, if I’d done something morally reprehensible like trying to steal someone’s boyfriend or fucking someone’s husband then yes, sure, there’s every justification to be unceremoniosuly cut off. “Off with her head!” and being led to the gallows…. But I’ve had women whom I thought I had a close connection with cut me out of their life overnight without an explanation on more than one occasion, for minor reasons or no reason at all, passive aggression at its finest, eh. A re-enactment of an abdonment wound that’s gaping open. It’s happened on three occasions that I readily recall, the most recent and most painful being last year just after I broke up with The Narc, being cut off literally overnight by someone I saw as a sister I never had, an older voice of reason who I could talk to about anything, a confidante and in her words, that I was “an effortless friend, someone so easy to be around”. That was a trigger so painful and so unexpected it hit me like a bombshell shattering my heart and spiralling me into a mini breakdown. Admittedly it was the catalyst to getting the therapy that I should have had decades ago which I am now having. (My earlier posts from 2024 share the raw truth and my feelings about that time of the unabashed ‘cut off’). The pain of that time still lingers; the forgiveness hasn’t occured.
I digress.
If I’d have lived a nomadic life and floated around from city to city or country to country for most of my life, then I’d understand the lack of constant-ness with friendships (I know that’s not a real word – poetic licence) picking up friends wherever I am from any given time. But to have lived in the same city all my life and to find myself starkly friend-less (which I wrote about last July), agitates my anxiety surrounding the issue and leaves me wondering if I’m a human repellent. I can’t be a magnet. But I’m certainly not a narc either. I am the common denominator though which is disconcerting. Perhaps I’m just too needy, with no inner sense of belonging, suffocating the life out of friendships?
In fact I read a quote recently that gave me a visceral punch and left me bawling, not in any physical pain of course but the emotional gut wrenching kind:
“if you don’t have a home on the inside you won’t find one on the outside” (something like that and sorry, I can’t recall who said that).
The quotee is right – I’ve never had a sense of belonging within me nor outside of myself (and the outer is the reflection of the inner).
This lack of belonging combined with my perforated boundaries when it comes to friendships (or lack of them) explains why the quote got me into an emotional soup.
I think I do hold on too tightly, desperately seeking the family I really want and need.
Without coming up for air, all of my life there’s been a rush to get close to people and desperately find my surrogate family, whether that’s friendships or romantic encounters (the latter of which I’ve steered clear from for nearly 18 months or maybe it’s avoided me). I feel like the process is not organic and when I meet someone who I think I connect with, I hold on too tightly, in a rush to replace the family that left us and blamed us for their trangressions (yes only now I realise that they are narcissists). The operative word is desperate, of course. I don’t come up for air and in the process perhaps I’m suffocating these would-be friendships. I want those people to welcome me into their world as much as I do they, who are at the forefront of my mind. Unbeknownst to them, these unsuspecting folk are my surrogate mothers, aunts, sisters and brothers, roles they don’t even know I’ve bestowed on them (I know I have a mother already but a second mum, the one I’d have wished for if I could conure one up – not that I don’t love my mother and I do feel a horrible pang of betrayal even typing that – but these blogs are raw and real me and I often wish that my mum was the self-motivated, no-nonsense get-up-and-go type).
I find myself doing all the ‘doing’ in friendships which is how my desperation shows up – proactively arranging catch ups and meet ups worried that if I go with the flow and wait for someone to contact me, that I’ll just be left listening to the silence around me. And that is what happens so I fill the void with a lone outing or with my mum. It’s not that I don’t like my own space or being on my own. But when I don’t proactively chase to feel connected in some way, I listen to the silence and wonder if I’m important enough to be remembered. That if I dropped dead tomorrow (and my mum wasn’t around) who’d miss me and who’d be that bothered? I have to say I’ve become cynical over the last few years, with the way in which people have flaked away from my life and I’m left wondering whether it is me being the common denominator?
I now know this neediness stems from the wounded child abandonded by her closest family (and nearly three decades later, blamed for it). It’s the part who probably does feel discarded, unvaluable and unwanted, who craves attention and affection, who wants connection and belonging, who most importantly wants love and wants to feel safe opening her heart. So she holds on tightly. Too tightly. How do I give her the TLC she needs? So far she’s moulded herself to try and fit into those around her, creating a social awkwardness. And for whatever reason, friends have cut themselves off overnight – an eternal cliff hanger that I’ll get the answer to in an afterlife. To be honest, I’ve never fitted in and I’ve always felt different. Perhaps children of trauma always do feel a bit ‘ugly duckling-ish’? But rather than bitching about the people who have flaked away or believing I’m some human repellent, perhaps I need to sit with the pain of the wound and give that piece of me the belonging, attention and importance it needs and wants. How do I do that is the question? How do I fully validate the pain, heal the wounds and integrate the shadows to merge into a unified wholeness that doesn’t feel broken and abate the alone-ness?
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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