I reacted within my mind to what he said, which was not intended to be read by me, and interpreted it as like a betrayal.
Betrayal.
 |
| Sitting on their roof |
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that it was okay and acceptable to force my friends to put up with me during an intense period of depression wherein I moped and laid on their couch and was generally a very negative presence, not taking responsibility for myself, not taking advice, but only wanting sympathy and comfort and fuel for my depression.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not realize/see that just because I felt better inside with the anti depressants did not mean that I had not impacted my friends and friendships in a negative way through my depression, that popping a pill is not the same as taking responsibility for myself.
I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to see, realize, and understand that because I refused to see my ex, this meant that my friends also saw my ex much less, and they probably missed him, not because they liked him more than they liked me, but simply because they liked him. Just as I did.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to charge this drama up even more within the thought that he was "my first everything," using this as an excuse to make the break up more painful and give me more fuel to feel sorry, sad, bad and depressed.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to become stuck within depression such that I did not want to get out, I did not want to hear anyone tell me how to get out, or how they had gotten out of a similar situation. All I wanted was for people to give me sympathy and pity and make me feel like it was okay to mope and be useless.
My friends told me they had known for about 2 weeks that this would be happening, so to me this meant that for 2 weeks my friends, my family basically, had been keeping this secret from me. All of them knowing, me alone not knowing.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that because my friends knew how depressed I had been and how so many months (2-3?) ago I had wanted to kill myself, they should be understanding and allow me to continue to mope and basically walk on egg shells around me, where it was this belief that I probably projected outward so that they understood that I was fragile which actually is probably part of why they kept the news from me for as long as they could, because they feared my reaction, not realizing the consequences of acting in fear.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold on to this knowledge of my friends having kept this secret from me, using this as evidence that they had intentionally betrayed me, that they knew what they were doing would hurt me and so they avoided telling me.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe thus that my friends were plotting against me, actually planning out how to hurt me, since clearly they spent time reaching the point of finally telling me.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to compound this belief within the realization that they did not finally inform me of this new change until I was about to leave to go home to go to bed as it was late and I had just gotten off work, so it was like they waited until the last possible minute to finally come clean and tell me, so within this I saw them as irresponsible and evasive of facing consequences, so I was able to blame them for my reaction because they could have communicated better.
So here I see it is not necessarily always the actual news itself that is most troublesome but is my identification with poor communication as being problematic where I find the most room to blame another, as is also the case with my apartment manager where it was his poor communication of the events as they unfolded that I latched onto most as justifying my anger, where here I expect other people to communicate openly and honestly, to keep me informed -- and I can see a connection here to how my mom has in the past and present kept secrets from me and others in order basically to protect us from having to face the news she must share, to prolong the prevention of reactions as long as possible, where I have always resented her when she does this because I then receive news of some family illness after the fact or end up with not much time to process the news she is giving, as has been the case both here with my friends and now with my apartment manager, where the upsetting news is compounded as more upsetting because of the time pressure along with the belief that the information was intentionally kept from me, regardless of why, although I usually assume/believe the intent is to harm me, even though typically another's intent is not likely to have anything at all to do with me but probably has more to do with the person keeping the information wanting to avoid consequences / protect themselves.
So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that other people keep information from me because they want to harm me, because they want me to be tricked and deceived. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to understand what other reasons might motivate a person to keep information from me, and to regardless of the whys support myself unconditionally and absolutely, rather than latching on to the matter of time and placing blame outside myself for my intense reaction because I wish that another person had communicated better and I believe that they purposely communicated poorly so as to harm me.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to believe that other people are manipulative and deceptive and intentionally trying to harm me, because within this I become the victim, within this I lose sight and understanding that I am my own directive principle, that no other person can make me react a certain way or have a certain experience, but that I accept and allow myself to react, and I accept and allow myself to react even more when surprises / poor communication are involved, rather than simply taking the information as it comes and assisting and supporting myself to understand the situation with whatever information I have.
Back to my memory:
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not know who I could trust because here every single one of them was in on it, even one of their girlfriends who did not even live there and who apparently now was "more important" than me because she was in on this plan, so they were all in on it together, conspiring against me together.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to doubt the real-ness of our entire friendships, to believe thus that I had been burden and they had identified me as a burden without ever telling me, thus not being real or honest with me, thus I doubted the entirety of the friendships believing they were fake all along, thus I believed that I could not trust other people and that I could not trust friends, that any person who seemed to be my friend was only doing so for some manipulative dishonest reason, because here the people who I thought were my closest friends, like family, had managed to betray me in such a way as this, so I believed this was thus possible in any friendship, so I developed an even greater fear of friendships now not only as a fear of their eventual demise as through my memories of friendships as my own inability within friendship longevity, but now also as a fear of betrayal and treachery and deceit, a paranoia that nobody actually likes me, that people simply just put up with me for as long as they can before finally spitting me out.
I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to traumatize myself within this conflict such that I have had like a PTSD in regards to friendships and believing that these moments will replay themselves within my life in my friendships, believing there is nothing I can do to stop it, having flash backs of the arguments and experiences, and generalizing the specific experience of this memory onto all my experiences, interactions, and friendships.
They also told me that they were doing this because my ex was "in a bind." And to me this was bullshit. I "knew" my ex. I knew his family. I knew he could not possibly be in a bind because of their financial stability and their home's proximity to campus. He could move home if he was really in a bind.
This blow made talking to my ex relatively easy. Suddenly I was not so scared to talk to him. I suppose it washed away, sort of, all that I had created in the time after our break up as my reactions and beliefs about him and myself, and brought me back to what had originally been a very stable and supportive relationship (which developed into instability and a lack of support primarily because of my increased depression and paranoia over time -- probably also precisely how I alienated these friends into choosing my ex over me). So I trusted that I could rely on him to show up for this conversation based on what I knew of him, his sweetness, his seemingly genuine starting point of supporting me from a place of "love," his ability to let go of his Seattle-born hipster pretense to have an honest conversation with me.
It (our relationship) didn't end well, although it was not messy, and we were too young and naive, but it was the only "healthy" relationship I've ever had. Or the closest thing to it, anyway.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I know better and to go into like detective mode to try and find evidence that I am right, that he is not really in a bind, that they are lying to and manipulating me.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to search out evidence that could stand as like proof of this betrayal and deceit, where here I don't know what I expected to have happen -- evidence is not a time machine, it does not change anything. Evidence only gave me more reason to continue to react and continue to be angry and hurt. It justified my own creation of reaction.
So I forgive myself for always accepting and allowing myself to try to delineate and put in order the series of events that lead up to and occur within a conflict like as if I am trying to prove something, like as if I am trying to put someone away before a judge or jury, like as if the evidence will actually do anything at all other than make me more miserable and increase the disparity within my mind between what I perceive and what is actually happening, where even if these friends were irresponsible, even if they did betray me, and even if I can find proof of their lies and manipulation, it does not change the fact that it happened, and it did not make them apologize or take ownership of their actions. It did possibly help me to feel "validated" within myself so that it was easier for me to realize that these friends were not really being "friendly" and so easier to move on, but in most cases I use evidence as fuel for my fire of anger and reaction, holding on to verbal exchanges, holding onto actions, holding onto series of events all to create a drama within my mind, a paranoia, trying to get it all in order believing this to be my salvation, not realizing that this is all in my mind, it is not supportive, it is not self honest, it does not fucking matter. It happened. What's next?
I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to, in reaction to the discrepancies between my perception of reality and the responses of others within conflict in my family, where what I saw to be real was not treated as real by others, where conflict was continually swept under the rug, to believe that I had to seek out evidence and formulate solid arguments in order to like keep myself sane, because arguing with my dad for example was like "crazy making" as we would go in circles and circles soon to be far and away from the real issue at hand, he always refusing to apologize, he always denying responsibility for his actions, me always left to feel as if I am the problem for seeing a problem. I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to try to validate myself through the collection of evidence and the memorization / recording of the series of events so that I can at the very least know what to tell myself, to be able to say "this is what happened and it was not okay," believing this would somehow make it better, believing too that I might someday be able to convince someone else to convince me that it was not okay, believing that this was how I could know it was not okay, since everyone around me seemed to treat it like it was fucking okay to hit your son.
So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to gather evidence and record events and then hold on to all of this as proof and validation to fuel my reactions and fuel also my depression as a result of my confusion from the discrepancies between what should have happened and what actually happened, what I saw versus what I was told. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to carry this reaction to conflict with me where I am not only experiencing conflict, which is difficult within and as itself, but am also believing in fear that no one else will believe my experience, my interpretation, no one else will understand what I am seeing, people will deny it, people will ignore it, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto this evidence like a toxic poison within myself, holding onto the past, not getting past the past, getting stuck on the past, getting stuck in conflict, getting stuck in my mind.
This is an ongoing pattern for me which especially contributes to the formation of grudges. It will come up again.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue and reinforce my pattern of grudge development through my reaction to this break up where at first I still wanted to be friends, but then saw I was still being too dependent on him, and so I wanted space, and then from there I did not want to see him or talk about him or hear anything about him -- I wanted him to not exist -- because I continued to relate to him within my mind, I continued to hold on to all the evidence I had compiled as to why he was a 'bad person' or how the way he broke up with me was cruel or continue otherwise to point fingers at him for my internal condition / state.
I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to react with like a grudge and avoidance even within the parts that I did take responsibility for, like seeing how I had become depressed and realizing that this would not be fun for him, understanding that we were young and that we probably wouldn't be together forever, being grateful for the ways he was good to me, but then because I regretted my actions and behavior and because I missed him, I held this against him and held it against myself, by which I mean that I continued to punish myself through my reactions, through my resistances to him and friendship with him.
Anyway, I requested to talk with him. He told me he wasn't in a bind. He admitted that the only reason he accepted the offer to move in with them was that he assumed that they had already talked to me about it and that I was okay with it. Obviously he assumed wrong, and he admitted that he should have checked with me first. Suddenly on my end everything was okay again: I forgave him in no small part because here he took my side: he was willing to enable my reactions through giving me the space to hate him. Within an experience of betrayal, sides become what matter.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create false relationships with other people, such as with him, where it did not take much to wash away a lot of the resentment and anger I had created, and thus it was false, but it was not until there was like a bigger threat that I was able to let go of that resentment and anger, that I was able to come back to the reality of the relationship we'd had.
I forgive myself therefore for not realizing and understanding that when I feel angry with another person it is only temporary, and therefore it is not real. If I feel angry with another person and then something comes up where I need that person, my anger dissipates, so it is not real.
I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to relate to others based on my emotional whims, depending on my mood state, and depending also on what I need a perceive I can get from them, whether it is something tangible or more like an emotional support, or company, or whatever it is.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create the illusion of "sides" within this experience of betrayal, separating myself from others like us versus them, and also seeking out people to "take my side," trying to turn others against "them" so that I can feel valid within my anger and resentment and also feel like I am punishing them by taking away potential friendships. This is nowhere near the first time that I engaged in this behavior, and it was also not the last.
I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from my friends, whom I considered like family, to put us on opposite sides, opposing sides, so that I was isolating myself within my reaction and my lack of forgiveness, isolating myself within a belief that this is what it means to stand up for myself, isolating myself within a belief that this was some terrible travesty and they needed to learn a lesson from it, not allowing myself to really learn from it until years later.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be confused about what it really means to stand up for myself, where to me it has always meant not letting others walk all over me, being defensive, building walls, and making sure everyone knows that I am right, this time I am right.
What does it really mean to stand up for myself?
So, by my friends, I felt lied to, deceived, manipulated, abandoned, and, obviously, betrayed. I became rigid and inflexible within this betrayal. All parties refused to apologize or take any responsibility whatsoever -- in fact some demanded apologies from me (the audacity, I thought). Some simply did not care enough to have the conversations to find understanding. Too involved in their studies or video games, not invested enough in what were supposed to be simple social relationships.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel lied to, deceived, manipulated, abandoned, and betrayed. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within and move myself by these emotions.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become rigid and inflexible within my emotional reactions, believing I am right and justified and valid within these reactions, holding tightly onto them so that no one could take them away from me or tell me they were false or wrong or not real or not valid -- so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within my childhood like as if people were taking away or invalidating my experiences as what I saw transpire in my family, in my home, so that it was like whatever I saw or experienced to be real was not real, instead whatever another person told me or however another person behaved was what was real, and I was just expected to shut up, watch, and deal with it. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to become possessive of my reactions, holding tightly onto them because I feared that someone might tell me they were not real or valid or someone might tell me I was wrong, that what I saw was wrong, that my identification of a problem is what is problematic, that I should just shut up and deal with it.
So again I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to like "evidence" to justify and validate my emotional reactions, like trying to prove to myself as much as anyone else that my experiences are valid, what I see is valid, I AM VALID, I MATTER. (But who am "I"? It is not my reactions that are valid and matter here.)
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not matter simply because I perceived that I did not matter to others, where here I did not allow myself to matter to myself, to take care of myself, to respect, assist, and support myself, but placed my existence as whether or not I matter outside myself, where whatever it was that I perceived within the world around me dictated what I believed about myself, so that when I saw abuse and it was not properly faced or addressed or handled or even admitted to, I believed that I was wrong for seeing it, and I believed that what I saw did not matter, and thus I believed that I did not matter.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to matter to myself. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to validate myself. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to believe myself as my real experiences and what I saw transpire as I grew up.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others to apologize, to believe that an apology makes everything better. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the memory that my father NEVER apologized, refused to take ownership for his actions, left every behavior of his open ended in terms of whether it was right or wrong, and yet was extremely controlling of us as his children and my mother as his wife, expecting us to do whatever he wanted us to do, expecting us to put up with his abuse, expecting us to not react, expecting us to just let him do whatever, to sink the ship and take us down with him.
I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to place high value on the power of an apology, and when another does not apologize, to fuel this with memories of my father.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I had nothing to apologize for, for not even considering to look at myself to see how I might not have been a good friend, as was the accusation against me when an apology was demanded of me. I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is unsafe to apologize first, that if I do that then I risk being vulnerable, I risk the other person taking my apology as proof that they are right, and still they will not apologize, and then I will have admitted I was wrong and they will continue to believe they are right.
So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat apologies as like an exchange, where when I apologize I expect to get something, like another apology, in return, or so that if another does not apologize then I withhold my forgiveness, rather than simply apologizing as I see fit within self honesty, and forgiving as I see fit within self honesty, both within taking responsibility for myself.
I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see the real power of apologies and forgiveness to free myself. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use apologies and forgiveness to further enslave myself within my mind.
I had it out with multiple people on multiple occasions. I was a mess in general. I wanted people to take my side. The one person besides my ex who did, in a way, take my side, did it without my asking. I was floored and I still remember it clearly. He had been in the apartment during the whole conversation (he was one of 5 who lived there), but he had to leave for work. He listened quietly, not interjecting much, until he was about to leave. As he left he also left us with some words, which were something along the lines of telling the other guys that he thought it was shitty the way they went about this whole thing, and telling me he was sorry for how it happened, and it wasn't what he wanted. Then he donned his bicycle helmet and left. He was a very cool guy, I always thought, so it meant even more to me to "have"* his support. And at this point it seems that the fact that he gave me that support without my having to argue or beg for it was what made me appreciate it all the more, never demanding any more from him, but simply letting him be. (What does that tell me about relationships and where I decide to invest myself and my trust? Couldn't I learn from this experience where someone supported me of his own volition, without any requirements of me begging or victimizing myself or throwing myself at their feet to please show mercy upon me? Why do I always do this to myself? Why do I not support myself, and see when others are truly supporting me, not of their own self interest and not of manipulation, but of compassion?)
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually seek out friendships and relationships with people who do not support me -- but here I have to redefine what support means. Nonetheless I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually seek out friendships and relationships with people who are disrespectful, who treat me unkindly, who make fun of me, with whom I engage in conflict and butt heads.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to make conflict "right" because if I can regain the approval of the person with whom I am conflict, if I can gain the approval of someone I have identified as not yet approving of me, then this is like I am proving something to myself, that I am worth something, I have value, look I was able to manipulate this person into liking me, or manipulate myself into believing they like me.
So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stick around in dysfunctional or even abusive friendships/relationships, where it is clear that the other person does not care about me the way that I care about them, simply because I believe that if I can ever manage to get them to care about me that way, or show that they care about me, say even just one nice thing to me, then this will mean I matter.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to respect myself, support myself, and know for myself that I matter, such that I look to others to do this for me, such that I keep myself in bad relationships and friendships rather than seeing that I do have value, I do matter, and I am worth more than abusing myself through my associations with others.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see and value the individuals who have seen and valued me, but to instead almost ignore them, believe they do not matter, and set my focus on gaining or winning the approval of those who do not see me and who do not value me. Within this I isolate myself. Within this I reject people who care. Within this I abuse myself.
* (I notice that I often think of support in terms of as something to be "had" or acquired or obtained or earned, and that once I "have" it I can rest easy and rely on that knowledge of that support to feel validated and reassured.)
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use support as like a commodity to be earned and kept, like something to fall back on when I do not trust or believe in myself, like I will think "at least I have that person's support" and this will make me feel better about myself, like someone trusts or believes in me, so that here I do not have to develop trust in myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually place my self worth and well being and validation outside myself, so that it is only when I receive support from someone I respect that I believe I am okay.
The "support" that I receive from others is most often just a perception, and it is not permanent as it is still within my mind at this point.
I commit myself here to learning to support myself absolutely within my physical, also understanding that it is within my physical existence as life that I am in fact supported by all life, as one and equal.
I had dreams, too, or maybe nightmares. In one I was yelling at sort of the ring-leader of the whole thing. I woke myself up when I said out loud, "get the fuck out of my house," and then punched the wall, literally, physically, because within my dream I was trying to tear off the shirt he was wearing that I had made and given to him.
Later I snuck into the apartment when most of my old friends were not there, snuck into his room and stole back the shirt as well as the painting he had of mine.
I thought it was really horrible that "these people" could betray me like this, refuse to apologize or come to any understanding, go on with their partying and drugs and baking of delicious cookies without me like as if nothing had changed at all, like as if my absence had no impact at all, and then still keep things I had given to them. Didn't they feel twinges of pain when they looked at those things? Why did they show no remorse? Or why could I not see it?
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to attach myself to things I have made or given to others as like an extension of myself, so that if that other person is no longer in my life or if we have a falling out or conflict, I wish that I could have those things back, so that here I obviously did not give them freely but gave them within a contingency of our continued friendship, of them valuing me. I forgive myself thus that I have not accepted or allowed myself to give of myself freely, because if for no other reason then I know that if I do not give of myself freely, I cannot receive freely, I will not be able to receive freely, because just as I have made contingencies for giving, so have I made contingencies for receiving.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to project memories and experiences onto objects and memories so that when I look at something that reminds me of an old friend, I feel a twinge of pain.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe and assume that all people do this, so that within this I become confused as to how another could keep something I gave them if we are no longer friends, not understanding that perhaps they do not have all the reactions and anger and resentment I have created for myself, not realizing that maybe they look at those things and they are just things, just objects, or maybe those things remind them of the positive aspects of our friendships, or simply remind them of the moment I gave them that thing, or I don't know what, I am not them, I do not know. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to project my internal experiences outward within the assumption that others have the same wiring and programming as I do and will have the same reactions to the same stimuli.
Life went on, and in reflection of the period, I'm not entirely sure how. One of the last memories I have of the whole ongoing conflict was one of the friends sitting in my room, trying to objectively and analytically understand me from his hard science background. He was also a good guy, just one of the ones who wasn't invested enough. He had friends outside this group. He had interests none of us could relate to really. We had a lot of great inside jokes and he was another person who genuinely wanted to understand others and expressed that he cared, and so I missed him a lot sometimes.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I could convince this one friend, that he would come back to me, that maybe he could convince the others, and we could all be friends again.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to remain and maintain rigidity within my position such that even as this friend was sitting in my room trying to understand me, and not being able to, I did not stop to ask if I even understood myself, or if what I was doing / thinking / saying even made sense, or if I was simply holding fast to my "side" and not accepting or allowing any kind of self honest self reflection, not allowing myself either to really try to understand my friend's "side," so that by the end of the conversation, when he still did not understand me, we still were not friends.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have a specific outcome in mind at the outset of that conversation, where the outcome that I wanted was for this friend to understand me, to apologize, to take my side. I forgive myself thus for not actually engaging in conversation but only in explaining, only in continuing to bolster my own reactions within my mind through trying to convince another with all of my evidence and my detailed delineation of events which prove how unfair and manipulative everything was, within this believing / hoping that this would change this other person and make him take my side.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be so rigid and inflexible that I cut myself off from a friend who tried to understand me, who took the time and effort to engage in a conversation with me, who was a good friend that I enjoyed, who I then missed a lot over the years as I remembered the "good" times and realized that the "bad" didn't really matter.
But anyway, life went on. I know I felt lonely. I know I was bitter. I know I didn't maintain any kind of friendship with my ex, really, even after he moved in. I remember too coming off the elevator as he was getting on, with who was probably his new girlfriend close behind him. I snickered to myself because I knew the look on his face: he was annoyed.
So I guess somehow I got up every day and went to my classes and wrote my papers and took tests and got decent grades and life went on. I recall that in some ways the whole ordeal was so outrageous, so seemingly uncalled for and blatantly unfair, that in some ways it was easy for me to stop seeking validation from others as holding a grudge and trying to get others to take my "side," because to me it was so obvious, to myself, what had happened, that it had been unfair, that this isn't what friends are supposed to do, so obvious that I was able to thus validate myself within it. I had my own studies to focus on, too, and my art. And I'd already been around the block the previous year with regards to getting through (but not over) betrayal.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to maintain distance from my ex even though we had reconnected on some level and as such I lost that connection with another person who knew me well and did care about me, who helped me see parts of myself that I did not want to see, who had enough respect for me and for himself to end our relationship when he saw that it was no longer healthy or supportive.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to comfort myself within my "knowledge" that I was "right" and that "what they did was wrong" so that it was like "easier" for me to "move on" but now I realize that I never did move on, because I carried with me the beliefs, resentments, judgments, projections, assumptions, and fears with me for years now, projecting it all onto new friendships, fearing new friendships, being paranoid about new friendships, and engaging in beliefs about myself, what I am worth, what I can expect in my life in terms of friendships, not seeing realizing or understanding my responsibility in how all of this played out, and especially in how I chose to respond / react, how I chose to make myself a victim, how I chose to cut myself off from my friends, how I chose to not understand them in the fact that they missed hanging out with my ex, how I chose to create sides, how I chose to try to get others to take sides, how I chose to not understand my friends in terms of their experience with me in my depression, how I chose to put myself as my self interest first, how I chose not to look at myself but only to look at what others were doing wrong, and how I continue with all of these patterns today.
Eventually I made one friend who was close enough that we decided to get an apartment together when our respective leases were up: a three bedroom with another girl she knew. It was in the same building again, but I actually can't recall now if my old friends had moved out by then or not. And so, as I say: life went on, and as such I continued leaving relationships and friendships in my wake.
More to write out on my life in relationships/friendships since college:
- Relationship with my roommate (La) freshman year of college
- Specific dynamic with her and my best friend (Je) from that year, the betrayal and paranoia breeding grounds
- Relationship with my first boyfriend (E) and its demise
- Relationship with my roommates during my junior year of college
- The transition from A to H to T.
- Second boyfriend (Z)
- More drugs and an STD
- Threesome and consequences
- The rise and fall of my friendship with T, and revisiting what I learned from C
- Various other sexual encounters, none of which were within committed relationships
- Ja, Be, Jo, Br, back to Jo, Co, A
- Friendships in Denver (Li)
- The roommate I had here in Sacramento (K)
- D
- A relationship now with myself
I am not who I think I am.
Then also to go back to high school, junior high, and elementary school friendships.
Other relationships to investigate:
- Relationship with myself as "depressed" -- the history of my self identification as depressed
- Introduction to and relationship with marijuana (intermittent and ongoing until about 6 months ago)
- Relationship with specific members of my family
- Triangling with mother and brother, especially freshman year of college, not to have been even remotely resolved until just this past year
- Overall relationship with sex
- Relationships with pets
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