Changing Tides: Adjusting Your Relationships

Making connections with people is difficult at times.

Growing apart after those connections are made can be hard.

Growing fond of someone who doesn't share the same sentiments can be harder.

But what hurts the most, is knowing you made someone (or a group of someones) your everything for a period of time in your life and then finding out that you are nothing more than a background character in their story.

Are you even the main character in your own story?

So much of my life, I have dedicated to helping better others, helping others stay afloat. It didn't usually matter the cost/toll of my own expense.

I can name all of the peers whom I have considered friends throughout my life and I can't tell you how many of them do not bother to reach out to me. They don't bother to entertain any of my whims by doing something as simple as liking a status, sharing a photo, responding to a direct message.

But of late, my group has dropped off. They have moved on. Decided this wasn't what was best for them.

And it hurts.

It hurts knowing that I am not enough.

It hurts knowing that I have spent all of my time, my resources, my efforts, trying to help these people through their rocky terrain. Knowing that I have confided in them things that I don't even feel comfortable telling a therapist or family, and it has all gone in one ear and out the other.

I feel unheard. I feel abandoned. I feel unwanted. Undesired. Unnecessary. Inconvenient. Problematic. Secondary to all else.

Everyone has different priorities, different directives. But why can't we work toward our own stars together. Why can't everyone play more than one role and be a main character in their own story but also a support role in someone else's campaign?

I can not stress enough how much I still continue to care for these people in my life. How proud I am to be able to say I knew them when and have seen them grow into something they have fought countless draining hours for. 

But sometimes, I wish things didn't have to change. I wish we could all always want to continue with each other. To always spend those witching hours on calls with one another. To always fall asleep knowing they are watching because that's when we are safest. To know that all we have to do is send a quick message or have an unusual tune to have them come running to embrace us.

I will always have those memories and sometimes it hurts knowing what I have lost.

I've lost the shared pain. I've lost the shared crazies. I've lost the shared loneliness. 

And now I am left here in the dark by myself while you isolate yourself somewhere else and our shining light goes off into her new light.