Being depressed makes me push people away. I have
probably done this a lot my whole life when I'm struggling to
function. I find it hard to manage being around people; even the
thought of the effort required to meet friends is exhausting, having
to put on the happy mask. At the moment I am just finding people so
irritating to be around. By now I don't have many friends anyway and
most of my family is completely self obsessed so there is not a lot
of effort needed to avoid seeing people if I don't feel like it.
I felt very let down by my friend who is probably
my most friendish friend. As in, she knows more about me than my
other few friends, I see her the most (which isn't much) and I don't
have to put on too much of an act around her. She has always let me
down really. I went through a period some time ago of wondering if I
should break up with her because we saw each other loads and then
when she met her partner, she started cancelling our plans every time
there was a chance she could see him. She's pretty self absorbed too.
She likes to always get me to tell her how I am and my news at the
start of our meet ups to free up the space for her to spend the rest
of the 90% remaining time to talk about herself. Often it doesn't
bother me because it's a welcome distraction and I don't feel like
talking about myself anyway and she's too nosey about what having DID
(Dissociative Identity Disorder) is like, how things are going with
clinical psychology...and always, always...what caused the DID and
often I don't want to even think about that stuff. But sometimes it
just bugs me that she does that thing of getting my bit over and done
with. She actually recently told me that this is what she does so she
can feel free to talk about her own stuff, not that I hadn't already
figured it out. But clearly she thinks that's fine.
But yeah, I had a
big birthday and she was the only non family member I invited but she
didn't come in the end because she wanted someone to give her a lift
and then leave the party half way through to bring her home so that
her dog wouldn't be alone. My sister was organising it and was not so
patient with her as I would be... she sent me a text saying: “I'm
sorry, I didn't realise it was her birthday
party, I thought it was yours!” In the end my friend was getting so
stressed out about getting home by 7pm and driving me up the wall
needing to know exactly how I was going to arrange it, that I told
her if it was too much trouble I didn't mind her not coming and we
could meet up another time. So she didn't come, but I did mind after
all. I felt offended that her dog is more important than her friend
actually. I mean, she leaves her dog all day to go to work Monday to
Friday. Just because it was on a Saturday, shouldn't have meant she
didn't come.
That was months
ago and we still haven't caught up. She sent me a text in February
saying was I free on the 20th
March at 2.30pm because she could fit me in for an hour coffee date.
I just felt pissed off about that too. Why do I have to be slotted
into her schedule that way? I'm clearly very low on her list of
priorities. I cancelled that date in the end because I didn't feel up
to it but I said could she give me 'some dates' when she's free. I
saw her at a wedding recently and she said she'd try to get a couple
of dates to send me. I just thought: “Fuck off. I'm not your
charity case.” But I just said: “OK” because I also like her
and want her to be my friend. I decided long ago that an unreliable,
self absorbed friend who I enjoy being with when I do manage to see
her is better than no friend. I may change my mind about that.
But having been
avoiding human interaction for months, with a friend like her, it's
very easy to see how little effort she puts in to meeting up with me.
It can be surprising how easy it is to distance myself from people; I
mean, it highlights how people just don't really seem to notice. I
have been avoiding everyone by not arranging to see people and not
initiating contact with people. But then I feel lonely because I see
that people don't appear to miss me either. I get angry that it's
been so easy to remove myself from the lives of my friends and
family. I feel like I wish they would have made more effort to notice
me. But then I don't want to see them anyway, so what am I
complaining about? For instance, I woke up today (Sunday) alone
because Adam is away and I felt sad that the people who know Adam is
away are probably out enjoying the good weather without me even
entering their minds to wonder if I would have liked to spend time
with them.
That includes my mother, who contacted me the other day to
see if she could call round for coffee but I was going out to the
shop and didn't want to see her. I said that Adam would be away at
the weekend so maybe the two of us could go out or she could come
round then but she didn't respond to that and Sunday afternoon is
upon us. And she knows about the depression now yet it still wouldn't
occur to her to even let me know if it didn't suit her and send a
text to see how I am doing. Yet, I'm glad not to have to see her and
if she did text me to ask how I'm doing, I'd feel annoyed and wish
she'd mind her own business. So no one can win with me can they? And
in all honesty, if I felt motivated enough to go out and enjoy the
sunshine too, I'd do it on my own because I much prefer my own
company to anyone else's at the moment. Yet still, I feel so
painfully alone too. What do I want from people?! If they make an
effort, I feel annoyed, often patronised and intruded upon and I wish
I could shut myself off from the world and live like a hermit. So I
do that and then I feel lonely and resentful of the same people for
not caring.
I don't know what's going on in my head. I want
relationships but when they are there I want to run away from them.
Is this all to do with having an attachment disorder? I am pretty
sure that I do have an attachment disorder but I only really saw how
it played out with my feelings about my clinical psychologist and in
the past, with Adam. I thought that nowadays the main issue with me
not having friends was not a lack of wanting friends, but a lack of
the skills or normality needed to develop friendships with normal
people. Perhaps all along I have been ambivalent about even wanting
relationships with people. I know a part of why I tend to back off
when people are wanting to be friends is because I feel like if I let
them get to know me any more than they do, they will start to find
out about my mental health problems and this sadly, does scare some
people away. But maybe it's not just that. People cause pain and I have had too much of that, so I try to protect myself from pain by avoiding people. But as they say, no man is an island and attachments and relationships are seemingly a human need and that's where the loneliness comes in I suppose. What can I do? Alone, I'm lonely; not alone I'm angry and defensive.
