I’ve been pretty quiet in terms of what I’ve been doing with myself lately. There are reasons for that, of course. A lot has been going on in terms of where I am and where I’m heading in many ways. I’ve had to make some tough decisions but I think I’m finally on the right track at last.
I’m still not doing too great personally, though. While I’m getting things done academically and somewhat so professionally, I still have a lot of personal issues to work through and overcome. Things like my depression, anxiety and just general ill-health due to my lifestyle seem to keep halting my progress and stop any semblance of growing up and moving forward.
The depression is something I’m beginning to get a bit more of a grasp on lately. It helps to talk to people and hanging out with friends, family or even just general interaction seems to help. I’m usually pretty relaxed when it comes to encounters but I have a nasty habit of going it alone a lot of the time. Often, I seem to take preference of working alone and avoiding people and, as a result, the depression gets invariably worse. No doubt the solution is staring right at me, but it’s never as simple as it sounds with this sort of thing.
The main issue, above all else, is how I think about people and how I perceive them to think about me, the crucial part here being the latter. Now, I do have friends that I would genuinely want to hang out with and have fun with again. The problem is, ultimately, contact. I never like to contact other people, whether it’s through fear of rejection, fear that I may be bothering them or just generally that what I have to say is not important enough to warrant a contact. What this leads to, obviously, is me not getting in touch with a friend for a long time and them not contacting me either as a result.
Now, I’m not saying that all of my friends should stay in touch with me all the time. Far from it! I believe that everyone should be free to live their lives as they see fit and if they don’t want to stay in touch, that’s absolutely fine... yet at the same time, I think that it isn’t. There’s this dichotomy going on where I care and don’t care at the same time. I think to myself
“I haven’t called them in a while... well they haven’t called me! Why haven’t they called me? Eh, whatever.”
It’s incredibly frustrating because I can’t seem to break the chain. It makes me dislike the people I call my friends purely because I can’t bring myself to make contact. I can’t convince myself that my friends like me or that I like my friends. So I end up losing a lot of contacts for no reason at all because I think they hate me when they almost certainly do not... or maybe they do and I don’t know...
But, to stick with the thought for just a little longer, the more I think about an old friend, the more I begin to wonder whether or not we ever were real friends. I know it’s an unhealthy mindset to over-analyze these things but it’s worth thinking about sometimes. I remember all the good times spent with them but then tend to focus on other tidbits perhaps not worth scrutinizing. Maybe I never got invited to an event they told you about, maybe they brushed me off once or twice. Nothing serious or devastating, but prominent enough that I still remember it happening. Almost like little grudges that build up over time. A part of me says to let it go and yet another part keeps pointing at it violently, cursing the friend’s name in the process.
Then I suddenly begin loathing this person, enough to break off contact with them, but not to an explicit enough degree to warrant a reaction. I just disappear from that person’s life for a while. Maybe they’ll notice, often they won’t. When they do invariably call, confused as to where I’ve been, I don’t know how to react. Either I appreciate the call and resume being friends with them or I brush them off, still convinced that they are awful even though they are contacting me like a good friend would.
Sometimes I wish I could just overcome these difficulties, move forward and be the good friend I expect everyone else in my life to be. I guess, in time, I will become less self-conscious and more positive. I doubt I’ll stop being as critical of my actions, but I’ll hopefully try to forgive myself a bit more for my decisions.
Also, if you are a friend of mine reading this and noticing traits I’ve exhibited, please accept this article as an apology for my actions.
