I find it really difficult to describe friendships at the moment. I find friendships really difficult. I am not sure if it is something that would have always been this way, or whether I would have had a very different life and had friends that hung around had I not had all the trauma in my life. I feel like trauma takes away so much, and being able to relate to people is one of the worst. I attach to people who get close, and then fall apart when they can’t keep up with my level of need.
Loneliness gets really intense. I sit and flick through the contacts on my phone and wonder about who I could call. And I get all the way through my address book, and not a single person stands out as someone I could pick the phone up to. Sometimes, I have days where I try and send out messaged to people to say hi and see if anyone wants to catch up, and some people reply, and many don’t. And, I understand that those that reply is something, but it’s interesting as I find this is usually the people I am least close to. Those that I thought I was closest to, I hear nothing from. And then I start to think, if I didn’t message anybody, who would ever actually get in contact with me.
There are things that I thought would be different. There are hopes I had. When I was studying, I had hoped that my classmates were people I could consider friends. I thought there would be people there that would stay in my life. But I also remember not falling into the “we will all be friends for life trap” and got told off when I called bull***t on it within a certain group. There were people in the group that I very much hoped I would stay in contact with, but there were also those in the group that I didn’t get on with and knew I didn’t want to stay in contact with. There is only one person who I am still in contact with. All of that “we will be friends for life” and not a single one of them has been in contact with me. I’ve tried to be on contact with some of them, but when I don’t get anything back, it makes me feel like I’ve got nothing left to give.
I work all the time, throw myself into it and work more hours than I should. I don’t do it because my job is so brilliant and I just want to put all my time into it. I do it out of boredom and loneliness. I do it because I have nothing else. That I would rather have my brain on work than have it on the fact that I don’t have anyone to do anything with all the time.
There is also no easy way to meet people as an adult. People tell me I need a hobby and need to go out there and meet new people. The idea of meeting new people just scares me. Because meeting new people is just meeting more people who can reject and leave me. There is also the question of how do I do that? There are things I enjoy, or used to enjoy, but I haven’t been able to do anything fun for a long time. It’s hard to explain what it is like to feel like you have zero self-confidence, to the point that it freezes you from doing anything. I love singing, and could join a choir, but the thought of not being able to sing well enough, and the shame of not always being able to sing the right note is too much. I used to love the theatre and being on stage, but now the thought of anyone looking at me makes me hope the ground would open and swallow me up. I know I need to work on my fitness, and could think about exercise classes, but the thought of anyone seeing my body attempting to exercise, or discovering how unfit I am, fills me with so much shame it seems unbearable. There are just always things that get in the way, that are always to do with being filled with shamed and embarrassment and not being able to stand people seeing me.
I think another part of the problem is that I don’t want new friends, I want the people I have been close to in the past. That losing them has caused so much pain and I just want them back. But I don’t know how to keep reaching out. What I would really love, is for someone to message me to find out how I am doing. I would like to know that someone cares about me.
And then I have to question, how much of this is me talking, and how much of this is my trauma. Trauma tells me that I am bad, that I could never be ok and no one could ever care for me. So people who don’t message me just reinforce the message. And I do understand everyone has busy lives and nothing is that simple, but everything in me screams out that it is my fault and I am doing something wrong and that of course people don’t want to be in touch with me because why would anyone want to be in touch with me. And it hurts, but I don’t really know how to get past it at the moment.
Fragmented Therapist 