Sometimes the most important thing that's ever happened to you is your friend's tuesday. It's just there, you're tired already, you still have so much to go, and now your friend is Going Through It. You want to be there, certainly. But we're adults who have our own stupid shit going on through our lives. And getting mad at them for not being there is understandable, certainly. But there is so much meaning you can pull from an absence that can instead be explained by 'I had to get groceries that day'. 'I kept remembering in the dead of night when you were likely asleep'. 'I thought about checking in then I got called in to pull a double'. 'We hadn't talked in two months and I didn't know how to apologize for that'. 'They never reached out to Me so I figured they didn't want to talk'. 'It didn't feel the same talking to you and I don't know what to do about that' We're all exhausted. We're all ass. Nobody knows someone who has everything figured out, and it takes an amount of stability to reasonably reach out and hold space for someone without upsetting your own balance. Sometimes people are just busy. But the thing with that is that we care about people, a lot. And when they don't care about us the same way, with the same availability, or the same quality, it hurts. We are used to dropping a lot to help a friend in need, either due to us having some abundance some day or from us having Emergency Reserves we can dip into because someone's Always going through it or by us just not caring that we got overbalanced because we'll figure it out later. I'm working on not blaming someone when they don't have the same resources to help. I guess I'm also just trying to be at a state in my life where if people are gone because they never check in then they're just gone. That doesn't make them worse, that doesn't make them mean or neglectful. It just makes them either too busy to keep your care in mind or they simply wish to be elsewhere than with you. That can hurt, absolutely, it can tear at you immensely to care for others in ways they don't care for you. That you would drop things to be with them and be in their time of need but they can't spare it in their own internal logic. Or that you care about them and want to be around them so badly but they can't quite find it in them to spend time with you. But it doesn't make them bad. It just makes them people. And one day we'll find better people. By being better people. Make sure your own mask is secure before you help others.