As humbling as it is to admit, I can’t seem to keep my close friends. For the past 5 years, I have seemed to lose my closest friend at the time. And not lose like they passed away, lose as in they ended our friendship and I had no say. And going through that in itself really sucks. Going through that for 5 consecutive years, it breaks you.Â
As all my friends close to me know, including the ones who I have fallen out with, for the longest time I have valued my friendships more than my family because of my troubling relationship I have had with them. For many years, I have felt more loved, supported and safe with my friends, so they have always been a top priority for me. I hold my friends so close to my heart and have so much love for them, more than they can ever know. I genuinely would do anything for my friends if it meant they were happy. So because of this, I try to be the best version of myself for my friends and cater to what they need in me.Â
Over the years, I have put so much time and energy into “improving” myself to be the person I thought my friends wanted me to be. These changes don’t have a name or have a look, but they are what has shaped my personality as I grow. I’ve been told that I’m selfish, that I’m aggressive, that I’m not supportive and more. When you get told these things about you and your character that you never realized, I feel like it’s an instinct to put your walls up. But when I put them down, I wanted the person they saw those traits in to be gone. So each time, a new version of myself was reborn when I allowed myself to make new friends again.Â
But I never saw these versions of myself to begin with, and so changing from something you don’t even recognize into something new constantly makes you so unfamiliar with yourself after a while. The “aggressive” person they saw, I saw a girl not knowing she had panic attacks and how to handle them. The girl they saw as “selfish”, I saw the girl who just wanted people to love her as much as she loved them. The woman who got called “unsupportive and judgemental” was a woman who tried every option possible to motivate and support her friend when they couldn’t themselves, who never saw her friend in a different light other than the friend she loves so much that just needs help. It’s so hard being misinterpreted and your actions being twisted when every single action or version of myself that has gotten to these end points were built specifically for these people who have left. And I’m not invalidating where these people are coming from, or saying that what they’re saying isn’t true (especially because it’s a pattern, so there has to be some validity to it). I am not trying to defend myself at all. I just get frustrated when my intentions get so terribly mixed up, and frustrated that I don’t see how who I am as a person, despite trying my best not to, hurts others. It’s so hard to see the people you love so much assume the worst about you when you spent every last bit of energy trying to pour so much love into them and be there for them. And never getting the opportunity to defend or clarify myself, or even the chance to fix things, leaves me starting over and “fixing” myself over and over again until the cycle repeats, even without understanding why. But never getting to say sorry hurts worse.
Because through all this turmoil, and all the pain I feel when I lose such a close friend, it never leaves me feeling like a victim. Even if I was, I never feel like I was done wrong. My instinct is to feel so sad that my friend ever got this sad themselves, especially because of me. What kind of person does that make me if I make people feel this way? Not a good one. The empath in me just wants to hug them and the problem solver in me just wants to fix things. But I never can, and I never will be able to, it seems. So, time and time again, I grow and enter into friendships, a new person, but also a paranoid one.
I don’t trust people anymore, especially those close to me, because I instinctively think they’re going to leave too. Like how I never trusted when my mother came back home because I never knew when she would leave again. I stopped trusting when my friends would say I’m a good friend or a good person or that our friendship is in a good place. I stopped believing that people wanted to even befriend me, let alone tolerate being around me. I stopped believing that there was anything I could do to prove that I am a decent human being. I stopped loving who I saw in the mirror because everyone who I thought loved me left, so why should I like who I see? I internalized every action I’ve ever made, overthought every word I’ve ever said and tried imagining the perfect person that I could become, a person that maybe someone would stay for. But then I remembered that’s what I’ve been doing every time this happens. And it’s still never enough.Â
It is so tiring having to constantly start over and change who you are for others. It takes so much out of you to pour so much into people, just for them to leave. It takes so much energy dwelling on what used to be, praying for what could’ve been and doubting everything moving forward. And the sad part is, you know you shouldn’t change yourself for others or internalize every time this happens but the fact that it happens so much makes that impossible. It makes the pain of losing so tiring and unbearable. It makes the feeling of grieving someone who is still alive even more painful. And it makes everything you do feel so helpless. You don’t even need people to convince you it’s not your fault, because all you want to be content with is that you’re not a bad person at heart. But nothing can seem to convince you that- no friend, no comforting words and definitely not yourself- when the pattern keeps repeating and the people you love keep choosing to leave.
So, I’ve gotten to a point of complete exhaustion. I’m exhausted of losing, I’m exhausted of hating myself and I’m exhausted of starting over. It’s so hard to be forced to let go of a love you felt so deeply for years, and try to build a love like that for yourself. But as a dear friend of mine once wrote, “You shouldn’t change yourself just for another person’s approval.” So I leave myself trying to learn how to take that to heart, continue to grow not only into another better version of myself, but a version true to me. Even if that means learning to be content with losing people over again. Because as long as I learn to trust God and his plan, despite how confusing it may seem, and learn how to pour that love into myself, maybe, just maybe, things will start to feel alright one day.