If you’re still here, thank you for reading this long ramble. I wish it was a bit more cohesive. Spend time and appreciate your friends and family because you honestly don’t know how much time you have with them.

For the most part, I think I’m in a better place. I’ve been through enough tbh.
Of course I understand that no one owes me their time/energy/friendship/etc. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.

That being said, there will always be a seat at my table, however awkward and clumsy it might feel.

I think I just needed a place to vent, because the last photo we took together popped up on my fb memories, and I realized how much time it’s been (and ouch I managed to hurt my own feelings)

I have only ever wished the best for them, and that I’m sorry that I couldn’t be what they needed

I realize that this whole thread has been entirely about me, and how I’ve been impacted. But all I really have is my side.
I would love to talk about the good times, and how there are things that I still do because of them. I don’t feel right giving away identifying information.

Much time had passed, I’d like to think I’ve grown (and hardened) a lot. I don’t really recognize the person I was a decade ago. The coping and the grieving I experienced over all of this is like the ball in the box analogy (as seen in included diagram).

I closed myself. I stopped letting people in, and it was like that for years. It took about four and a half years for me to even begin to start opening up again. (The big event that kind of ripped the band aid off is another story for another day, but it had to do with the aforementioned ex)

For the first few years I attempted to reach out. At first (obviously) a bit more panicked, then just a “hey, hope you’re ok”, “can we please talk about this? I want to make it right.”

I stopped. I didn’t want to bother them, and I felt extremely pathetic.

I never expected a friend break up to just completely fuck me up the way that this did. Sure, I’ve been heartbroken over breakups with romantic partners, but none of them even come close to the absolute heartbreak I experienced. I felt a a piece of me just die.

I was %100 huffing copium, I was spending a *lot* of money on cosmetics (that only got worse after my mom passed)

I believe that I just may have been a toxic person, even if it wasn’t intentional. There was just…so much.

I know that back then I was having a really tough time balancing school, being a caretaker to my sick mom (and not too long after my dad) and then also work and some semblance of a social life.
My ex was a garbage human, and at the time I didn’t really see it because I was just trying not to drown.

I cried most of the way back to my ex’s place. It felt like I was never going to see them again.

About a week later they completely disappeared from my life. This is what I have considered the ramp up to what was going to be what I consider the most difficult years of my life.

I mean, I am perpetually riddled by anxiety, so yes. A little.

But more you gots dis for doing big thing!

You gots dis!!

I also can’t find my goddamn work notebook, and it’s a fucking problem because all of my cheat sheets for SAP are in there

It’s here!! I need to do something about my upper body strength because getting this into the house was a S-T-R-U-G-G-L-E