i’m like the world’s worst chameleon. i’ve had so many friends and gave so much love, and i don’t keep up with any of them. i watch their stories and read and listen to them talk about their life, and understand none of it. i don’t know these new people, don’t understand their new relationships. i see names mentioned and my mind draws a blank, i see new faces and my chest aches a little. i’m happy that they all have good, happy lives but it still stings that none of them include me.
i feel like catherine madison from buffy, forced to watch the world move on without me while i can’t do anything to stop it. except without the villainy, and the magic, and swapping bodies with my teenage daughter to relive my peak as a perfect cheerleader, and the being confined into a cheerleading trophy for the rest of my life. so not entirely like her, because i suppose i do have the option and the possibility to change my situation.
maybe it’s because everyone moved from home and i stayed where i am, but surely friendship can still last the distance? i spoke to an old friend the other week, one i loved deeper than the others, to apologise for how our friendship ended. i confessed in the apology, however delayed it was. a little part of me hoped she’d read my message and we’d reconnect, but i knew we wouldn’t. she was nice, and we caught up a little bit: i know where she’s going to uni and what course she’s doing and how she was finding it hard to make friends too. it sounds bad, but that did make me feel a little bit better, knowing that someone as charming as her was struggling too, and that it wasn’t inherently my fault that i hadn’t found a friend group within a week. but i was right, and we’d grown to be too different over the years and the conversation soon dried out. maybe that’s why every other friendship failed, because we all changed too much. maybe it isn’t my fault.
there’s so many people i want to reconnect with. i want to know what’s going on in their lives, what’s happening in their relationships. i want to be angry at whoever has wronged them. i want to have the right to. but that’s not exactly something you can ask for, you have to earn it. and i don’t know how.
i have so much love to give, but i haven’t always. i used to play the role i thought people expected me to play. i was the mean one, the one who’d jokingly insult, the one who’d shy away from affection and would never show emotion. that isn’t me. i care deeply, and i love letting people know that i care about them. i love feeling loved, so of course i want to make other people feel the same way. i think part of it all was my autism: i didn’t know how to connect with people, didn’t understand any normal way to express that. the other part was my repressed lesbianism: i knew i was into girls, was comfortable with it, but god was i terrified of giving my friends the wrong idea. i’m not so scared anymore, i know this kindness doesn’t make me weak, but now i don’t have anyone to give the love to.
i have taken so long becoming comfortable with myself that now no one else is. maybe i am the problem, maybe i was a bad friend, maybe i did take jokes too far. but i can’t go back and erase the person i was, i can only move forward and work out where to put all the love.
like this is so beautiful
oh beth this is lovely