i'll keep trying to keep the skies blue

i know she cared about me. i am a hypervigilant, traumatized person with difficulty regulating my emotions. i am not the kind of person you can fake caring about, both because i am hyperaware of when i'm pissing people off and because i am not an easy person to care about

and i don't think she's a good enough liar to fool me. i think she did care about me. i think she struggles to accept that she cares about people. for someone who constantly told me she doesn't need people and doesn't really care about them, she was constantly surrounded by people.

people who don't need, want or care about people don't regularly visit their coworker to cook for her and her family and watch movies with their kids. they don't bring over their expensive, imported, special interest merch so the kids can play with them. they don't go out of their way to patiently support their deeply ill friends. they don't spend spend most of the time they spend gaming playing with other people

if she didn't care about me i wouldn't have noticed how she hung out with me for more than twice as long as normal on her last few days here. i wouldn't have noticed how after a slay the spire run where she'd normally leave, she instead asked to do another run or watch tv.

it's hard to hold all of these things at once.

she is my friend. i care deeply for her and she cared deeply for me. she was a good, stable friend to me. she was reliable and steady. despite being a person who isn't very emotionally expressive, hates physical touch, and is different from me in very fundamental ways - i could feel that she loved me. i know what it's like to just be tolerated, and it doesn't feel like love.

and yet she did this. she removed herself from my life with no warning whatsoever. she completely disappeared. i don't think she did this because she doesn't care about me. i think she did this because she does care about me, and maybe she was worried she'd miss me, and maybe this was her way of proving - to me, to herself, to the world - that she does not need people and does not care about them.

that's why this hurts. i can't believe she doesn't feel guilty about it. i wonder if she's burying that guilt like she's burying the care she feels for people. i wonder who all she ghosted when she moved away.

it's so hurtful. i'm so hurt, and i'm angry, and i'm worried, and i'm grieving. i miss my friend. i'm very worried about my friend. i hope my friend is okay.

i know her life has not been easy. we are both trans and autistic but we have very different experiences of both of those things. from the very little she ever told me of what her early transition was like, i can see how that alone can lead to a lot of issues forming healthy relationships with anybody.

but fuck, i want her to be okay. i want her to realize she loves and misses me, and that i love and miss her, and that all of those things are okay. i want to hear her voice again, i want to play video games with her again, i want to laugh and joke with her.

i want her to see that she is loved, not just by me, by a lot of people. i want her to know that people love her for who she is, and not just for the masks she wears. i want her to know that i am incredibly hurt over what she did, but when i hold that one action up against 7 years of friendship and 4 years of living together, i still see her as someone who consistently supported a lonely, traumatized, unstable friend.