Friends
I used to think that the reason I haven’t been able to make a lot of close friends is because of me. Like that I’m just not interesting enough or that I’m too annoying so people didn’t wanna be around me. But that was my armor. Growing up I was never anyone’s top priority, so it was too painful and hard to deal with if I was left out of things socially too. If I wasn’t thought of, it was rejection, and it hurt. Making it my fault, finding my flaws and blaming myself, was how I kept it from hurting when people rejected me.
And when stopped making it my fault, I kind of realized that I’ve been pushing people away on purpose for a long time. Every time I’m comfortable around people or I make a friend I stop making the effort because I’m scared of being rejected. So they drift away from me instead of splitting off painfully. I’ve even pushed people away as audience members. I don’t have the following colleagues with smaller channels have, which I used to think was because I’m not charismatic enough, but I’ve probably made an effort to put a lot of distance between myself and people, in spite of how open I am about some things in my videos. When people respond to that I don’t know how to accept their generosity and kindness. So I ignore it and make it stressful and turn it into pressure. I push it away because I’m afraid of letting people down and being rejected.
So I wanna say, sincerely, thank you to the people who have stayed. To my friends that refuse to be ex-friends even if I’ve tried to push you away. To my viewers who continue to follow me even if my uploads gap or I try new weird things in my videos or I don’t respond to your messages and kindness. To people who are understanding of my weirdness. I have a lot of flaws, but they come from a lot of hurt. I’m still working through it all, so I’m incredibly grateful that there are so many of you who really understand and who still care about me. Thank you.
I haven’t lived a really long life and a lot of what I’ve experienced has been painful and scary, so it’s hard to put distance between myself and that even though it’s been years. It was a majority of my life. But the more positive, wonderful, kind people I’ve met and continue to meet, the more I start to learn what normal is like. The more time and experiences I put between myself and how I grew up, the more positive my outlook is and my opinion of myself. Sometimes I worry that I’m too open about a lot of things and it makes people uncomfortable. If I do, maybe that was me pushing you away too. But I also hope that somehow, if there’s some kid like me who’s still in the awful part of their life, if they read how much better it gets, they’ll have hope. Cause hope is all you can hold onto when you’re powerless.
