I currently have a few pals who refer to me as their best or one of their best friends, and though I don’t try to stop that and therefor ignore their feelings, but I do still feel uncomfortable with wearing that title, especially if I’m expected to think in those terms myself, as if my counterpart is my bestie in return.
Ummmm no thank you.
My point of view is not one of imagined superiority or any other catty BS. I hope with deep sincerity that the three wonderful, fun, trustworthy individuals to whom I'm alluding don’t read this and think that I don’t respect or love them, as that is not my intention at all. My issue is the terminology and my not understanding its meaning. This essay comes from a fear-driven belief of mine.
I hope you'd agree that even when we’re little, we can be damaged by life, and I was six or seven years old when something I don’t remember now caused a misconception to take root in my brain – this belief that the only people I could wholeheartedly trust to keep my secrets and unconditionally love and respect me were my mom and dad, and I have believed that every day since. If you’ve known me personally, this confession explains a lot, doesn’t it?
And please believe: all social interactions are affected by this.
From probably my teen years up until recently, I thought of the issue as my "fear of vulnerability“, which it is, but…these days, that no longer seems like the appropriate name.
Anyway, to break it down: I'm afraid to be very vulnerable to another person because they could easily hurt me. That pain could be caused by the humiliation of having secrets of mine exposed to others, or by simply being looked down upon by this platonic friend/boyfriend/etc., even by the conclusion of the relationship, regardless of what relationship type it was, making me feel a sense of loss or betrayal. In order to lessen the amount of such pain, I've committed to some bad habits for about twenty-five years now, pushing people away.
At times, especially in my teens and twenties, I would honestly answer certain personal questions asked by certain people simply because I felt obligated, since both people in the conversation were female and we called what we had a friendship, therefor, in my mind, we were expected to open up to each other about certain things and hug hello and goodbye and give birthday gifts and on and on and on when, in fact, I didn’t actually trust the other person with this personal information and hated the idea of them possibly using it against me at some point, intentionally or not.
In case you might need me to explain that differently, let me put it this way: You’re not allowed to get to know me because I don’t want you to deeply hurt me, which is a difficult framework for a life, made harder by the past poor decision to befriend some people who are not only incompatible with my personality to begin with, but also just too dysfunctional at the moment, absorbed in their gaping emotional wounds. For example, that was the case with Shauna and with Rachel, the person formerly referred to on this blog as “L". Obviously, by now, I've experienced a lot of poor treatment from people who were hurting, some of whom I knew not to get involved with and chose to anyway. I’m ashamed of the fact that I recently repeated the pattern when I briefly replaced Shauna with someone who was her equal in selfishness and insecurity, spending time with them because I was lonely and they lived close by. I truly wish that I could talk about all of this in the past tense, because having made such a blunder recently is F-ing embarrassing, but if I’m finally ending these patterns and committing more to self-love, why not open up about it for the sake of people who can relate? I no longer want to make room for an underdog along the lines of Shauna, Rachel or even the girl that Goldie used to be, when instead I can welcome kinder, more respectful people who are better at managing their emotions.
Wanting the new friends and learning to manifest them is a good prospect, but I now have to put in the effort to be more authentic after decades of using childish defense mechanisms that don’t do any good. Yes, I now get to put myself out there to make new friends, but man, I have to be my real self as best as I can, tossing aside longstanding bad habits, and odd as it may sound, that thought is daunting; it's F-ing scary. In getting to know new people, I'm supposed to be...honest/real/legit/authentic or some crap?
I'm working on it, hoping to turn this wound into a scar. It hurts, sure, but all the effort is so worthwhile.
<-- Vincent Genna.🧡❤
<-- Gabrielle Bernstein.🧡❤
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