my friend who i met on friday. made me feel terrible for the whole weekend. she makes me so tired. she made me want to get hti by a bus. she just. immediately when she saw me. talked about herself for maybe..... like 2 hours solid, didnt rlly ask me anything about myself or what i was up to or just.didnt show any interest in me at all. just. ‘oh this is a good story, youll love this. i know youll find this funny *tells me a story about the 3 boys who r currently into her*” *i stare blankly at her because i literally do not know what to say and stopped knowing what to say to her about her BOY DRAMA about 2 years ago* occasionally i interject like... well i wouldnt know anything about that so i cant comment... which is code for ‘the thing ur talking about has got nothing to do with me and is totally outside my frame of reference, so i have no idea why ur telling me about it’
its just, so many bad feelings all over again?
i spent the past what, 4 years, considering her to be one of my best friends, and for the first 2 of those, i treated her like. the chosen one. only she had problems. her life was the hardest. her life was the best, the most interesting. id sit down in the morning and have all sorts of feelings all sort of stuff going on in my head, because, u kno, im a sentient human with feelings and a life, and shed sit down next to me, and id be like, friend! hooray! and shed just procede to either, say nothing to me, no hello, no how are you, and just text someone i dont know and giggle nd smirk the whole time, and then maybe eventually tell me all about who she was talking to recount some of the livelier parts of the convo to me. or shed sit down and immediately rattle off a story about the craaazy party she went to and how much fun it was nd all the boys she got off with, and i would have to be like wow!! omg!! no way!!! haha!!! omg!! !!!!! or shed sit down like, rlly upset and be like, im rlly stressed :( school work is stressing me out :( im having problems with my boyfriend :( and at first. at first. as in about 2-3 years. i put my all into handling her. i listening to her anecdotes with interest and enthusiasm. i listened to her **tragedies** with sympathy and offered as much advice as i could even when her problems were like ‘i cheated on my bf’ ‘i overdosed on drugs’, u kno, things that maybe i shouldnt have treated her like a victim for? stuff she did, herself? but iw as like, ‘oh no poor baby, here cry on my shoulder for 5 hours, yes, im fine, thanks for asking, i mean, i dont actually have a life or feelings i just exist for you to talk to :) and i legit thought that we had a good friendship??? that i was just being a good friend and that i owed her it????? even though i could probably count the number of times she asked me about myself in a year on one hand?? and i justified this because i told myself that she genuinely had the hardest time!!!!! she talked so much about how hard her life was it made me forget that she wasnt the only person who had friend problems, or family problems, or was stressed about school. id think, im miserable, i have horrible nightmares, and when i think about exams and the future i feel like im dead, i constantly feel nauseated to the point where i cant even eat, and shed be like ‘im stressed about school’ and id be like omg no way poor you :( because i thought that
i thought that the fact that she was saying that she was having a hard time, despite the fact that during a levels, everyone was clearly SO STRESSED AND UNHAPPY (literally, the reason i didnt voice my feelings, and none of my other friends did either, was because everyone with a brain, could tell that everyone was unhappy, everyone was stressed, so that there was no point saying ‘im stressed’ because its so redundant????? ) so i thought that the fact that she was saying it meant she was MORE STRESSED. guess what??? after like 3 years, i found out she wasnt. she was fine. she was going through NORMAL FEELINGS, but she was just so spoiled that she thought the world was ending and that everyone needed to hear about it! i mean come on. i refused to consider the idea that she was being melodramatic for so long because, i cant see what its like to be her, and oh no what if shes legitimately depressed :( excuse me? what if IM legitimately depressed? what if our other friend who is doing several retakes, has insomnia, and is trying to get into medicine, a path she has dreamt of for years, although shes already been turned down by med schools and having her dreams shattered, what if shes depressed? what if her problems are worth talking about? what about my friend whos step mum is dying? who spent the year trying to talk to the school counseller about it and got nothing, while unnamed friend who this rant is about somehow managed it. what about when her step mum DID die and she talked purposefully lightly and flippantly, she was so detached, she didnt want to get upset o go too deep into her feelings, it was obvious, but she talked about the funeral, and her distraught half siblings and how brave they were, and this girl. this friend. the friend im ranting about. was so clueless, so self absorbed that she seemed to think that the fact that she wasnt sobbing uncontrollably meant that she was fine, that this was nbd, and that she could intterupt, yes, interrupt with stories about her social life. i mean, this girl had lost a close family member, but because she wasnt demanding anything from us (which would have been fine, she really needed her friends at this time and i wuld have done whatever to make her feel better) but she kept it kind of bottled, not so much that it wasnt obvious that she was upset, but this girl. lets call her L. thinks that this means her story is unimportant, that shes fine, and that she can steamroller all over her and dismiss her.
it was a low point. i think if someone had took L to the side and said ‘excuse me, someones died, and ur friend may not be SPELLING IT OUT FOR U, but ur kind of ignoring her feelings and experiences?’ she would have been like, oh my god im so sorry, and done whatever, offered her shoulder to cry on, because thwe most frustrating thing of all is that L is not a bad person, shes not mean or unfeeling, and if you ASK for her time or for her to comfort you she will do it, willingly. maybe the reason shes so unjaded about playing therapist is because no one demands it of her, because when someone sits down next to you and says ‘my life is really hard’, if you are a good friend, you talk to them about it, you dont go haha anyways here are my problems, even if you know that you want to talk about it, and that you deserve to be able to talk about it, theres just no window. you say ‘hey’ she says ‘hey’..... so then u say.. begrudgingly ‘how are u...’ and the ensuing story, good or bad, always takes exactly as long as the time u have together, thats the whole 15 mins of break. the whole time between starting the convo on fb and going to bed. theres no time or room to talk about yourself, especially when she wont ask you herself. and because i and p much everyone except have have some fricking manners, we dont interrupt her. and so she continues to labour under the impression that shes the only one with problems and the only person who has a life or experiences that matter
amazingly, astonishingly, a few months ago, she started talking to me at about 2am on fb, and like i said, because she is essentially a good person, and does worry about her friends, ad has... a tiny bit of self awareness, with a little bit of prodding, i managed to get her to saw of .... realise her own problems with what she was doing. i felt so smug that id managed to get her to realise all of the crappy stuff she was doing without explicitly having a confrontation, and also, proud of her? i thought see, this is why i stuck by u, because u have ur flaws, but ur willing to work on them when u realise what they are. and she said all this stuff like ‘i didnt realise that because no one was sharing their feelings, they werent having a hard time’ and i was like yassss well done L!!!!! thiss is so great
didnt rlly speak to her for a while because we were just, dfoing different stuff.
then i meet with her on friday. and im optimistic. excited. because after our convo she must have worked on it, right? she noticed her own flaws and talked about working on them, thats awesome! nope. she was. exactly the same. no. she was worse. everything was 200% more dramatic, more hilarious, more amazing, more terrible, she asked me maybe... 2 questions about myself, and i did kind of have to prompt them. and as soon as i realised nothing had changed i just sort of spiraled. i didnt want to be there. i really didnt help my case, i didnt volunteer any info about myself, because i wanted to see if shed notice. if shed say hey, ive talked so much about myself, what about you? she didnt. she said, you seem distracted (lmao sorry im not lmaoing hard enough aat your stories) i said, ive got indigestion, i get it when i feel anxious. generally in social situations. i sort of lied. i almost never get it any more, and guess what, spend some time with her, my ‘best friend’, and whammo, i got all the nausia and stomach burnin fun that ive come to kno and love as a sign to ollie outie of a situation. thats not healthy. its not healthy for someone who claims to care about you to make you feel like that. i got morose. i wanted her to ask me if i was ok. i was ok before i met up with her but talking to her was making me miserable. i wanted her to notice and ask me about it, anything to show that she was interested.
heres the kicker. she says, im so glad we had that convo. im like, oh yeah?? this is a good start. then she says, id didnt realise our other friends werent ‘as good at sharing their feelings as me’
i kind of bristled. they arent... ‘as good’??? like bein g self centred, ignoring others social queues and feelings, talking incessantly about yourself, is a special talent that you are blessed with, and our friends, including me, are the flawed ones, for listening, for being patient and caring? for giving you everything. how. dare you. she says, ‘now im at uni, and im surrounded by people who are better at sharing. it makes me feel not so egotistical, and more normal’. like christ, ok, i hope i never have to socialise with your friends. you arent normal!!!! all thats changed is youve found a hoard of other self centred maniacs that make you feel normal, so you can all talk over eachother about how terrible your lives all are and live happily ever after!!!! jeez!!! and the other day she said to me, im so tired of all these middle class white girls complaining about their problems. mate, what are you then? that is like, dictionary definition of you? guess what, youve found people who are like you, and it makes you feel better, makes you feel normal, but you still cant take it!!! because it is exhausting!! now you get it!!! and you dont even realise tht you just described yourself!!! jesus!!! i p much forgot that there wasnt a camera for me to look sardonically into. it was just dso. unbelievable. how can you seem like an intelligent person and yet be so clueless/
its one thing to have a crappy exhausting friend, but when they are pretty much one of your only friends out of about, 4 people in the whole world who you actually talk to (i probably get social interaction in person like, onces every two weeks, and dont rlly talk to people on fb) , and shes just so disinterested in me,n and now i know she thinks im flawed for putting up with her crap!!!! i will not stopp to your level!!!! im so angry!!!1 no matter how smug and self absorbed you are, i will listen to my friends and make the frigging effort, i will ask how they are, i am not the one with the problem, i will not change, you should change!!!!!! shes subconsciously trying to force me to be like her, to rant all over her and dismiss my friends feelings, well i wont!! i wont do it so that you dont have to change!!! i wont do it to make you feel better about your flaws!!1 if we are talking and u start to feel like youre hearing your own voice too much, you do something about it!!! it shouldnt be all on me/11! what if iwas really upset about something, and i wanted to talk about it, bt it was hard to broach the subject, she would never know.
i feel like, friends. they are one of the only people who know you, and prove that you exist, because how else can you prove that you exist if not through other people. but what. what am i meant to do when one of my oldest closest friends makes me feel so invalidated, like i dont exist and dont have a life outside of listening to her. what does she think i am? she cant think im human.i dont feel like one when im with her either
