Friendships
Why I don't have many close ones
“Friendships” won the vote from the “Things I’ve Lost” list! Thank you SO MUCH for all your votes! *Disclaimer: I don’t exactly know what’s going to come out here because I’ve never explored this in writing, but here goes.
I’m a weirdo. I don’t try to hide it. This gives other people permission to be weirdos.
Most people are pretty wound up around this fixed ideal of how they want people to see them. It’s exhausting. They don’t want to do it anymore.
Being around me is easy. That’s it.
I’ve had a lot of friends.
From a point of loss, I’m writing this thinking maybe not. It’s how I think of my marriage. I didn’t “lose it.” It just shapeshifted into something better. Maybe we’re not meant to spend our entire lives sleeping with the same person. Maybe we’re not meant to spend our entire lives friending with the same person.
I love people. Adore people. Get drunk on their stories like I used to get drunk on wine. But for me, friendship is tricky.
I think with every iteration of myself, I’ve attracted different people. When I was in active addiction, I attracted codependents. When I was wounded, I attracted mothers. When I was starving, I attracted feeders. In some cases, boundaries got too blurred, and we started becoming the same person. Chasing identical dreams. This was my own fault for not understanding how healthy relationships worked. I never really learned that. Asking for too much without seeing what it’s doing to someone else. That’s pretty shitty. And I accept full responsibility for it. I also don’t regret my decision to get out.
I think for a while, I thought I needed to collect friends. To prove I was a good person. I remember being in outpatient therapy that first year I got sober. One of our first assignments was to write out and read aloud to the group our “life story.” One of the main critiques of mine was the blatant lack of friends mentioned. I didn’t mention them because I didn’t have any. This gave me somewhat of a complex. I spent the next few years trying to prove the troupe leader wrong. What can I say? I had the emotional intelligence of a 16-year-old (they say your brain stops developing at the time you start drinking). It wasn’t right. But it’s what happened.
As I mentioned at the start, people are exhausted. Just like it’s exhausting to keep a muscle activated around the bone frame of a vignette, it’s exhausting to be in a constant state of interrogation and growth. I mean, who really wants to be around that all the time?! But that’s who I am. And will always be. So I don’t have many very close ride-or-dies. And that’s ok by me.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about friendship.
Is this just me? Are there more weirdos out there?! lol
Dear Friend,
Thank you for being here. Your readership means everything to me.
With Warmth,
Rosie
P.S. If these field notes, anecdotes, and essays have helped you along your journey, please consider upgrading your subscription to help me continue doing what I love most! For just $8 a month, you can help me keep writing and creating content in service of collective transformation. Every upgrade helps! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
THE LOSS PART
Some friends I’ve lost to oceans. Some to miles. Some to time. Some I lost when I quit drinking.
So over the years, I’ve had a lot of friends. And then had to let them go. Not because they did anything wrong. But because I can’t sustain the contact necessary to maintain a friendship because I have so many people I want to keep in touch with. So I think what I am is like a bug trap. All the pretty insects fly to my light and then I zap them and thats’ it. It’s super dramatic to say they fall to the floor. They dont’. They’re all doing just fine. But maybe they needed me for a short period of time and I provided something they needed, and then it was time for us to part ways.