Selfishness in Friendship

Selfishness in Friendship

 

I have been very selfish in my friendships lately. Nobody’s noticed because, well, I’ve had an autistic meltdown and nearly nobody has talked to me in days, weeks if you don’t count the dental pain and the literal not being able to talk. Around mid-March, I was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, and the way they phrased it was… not very nice. It was very clinical, and I made the mistake of reading some of it last night or the night before. The sleeps have me all confused. Basically I don’t communicate the way that other people do. No, that is putting it mildly. There is the way that everyone else communicates over here. And then waaaaaay over here in this distant corner is me, wishing I had friends, relationships, anyone to love the child who so desperately needed communication with someone that they would take anyone. But then my mother died and I pushed everyone away because everyone was going to let me down. Eventually I let in church people and people who seemed kind and loving. Then I came out as gay, and some of them said it; some of them didn’t have to say it; some of them said it through the silence that followed the coming out. They weren’t here to stay as long as I was gay. And that just broke me. So I was in a weird place with kind of friends until the car accident happened, and then it was made apparent I had no friends!!

I moved in with relative strangers who, looking back, were truly the only friends I could rely on at the time. They gave me everything they had to give and more. For months I stayed with them, rebuilding myself from nothing. Then, with the help of others, I got a job at Dollar Bank, my “ticket to freedom.” Though my six years there taught me never to trust corporate or anyone, it did bring me back to square one. By this time I had a loving husband and a house to fall back on which was great. My mind had fallen apart. I had completely burned out, and I had no idea who to turn to. My therapist wasn’t doing a good job, I was doing everything in my tool kit, and even Partial Hospitalization didn’t finish the meltdown. I turned to my friends, but they weren’t therapists. I tried to encourage my friends, which helped a little bit, but you can only do that for so long before the isolation inside kills you.

I ran across some random realtor on Facebook, because once you know one, you must know them all, right? So I friended him, and he wrote this beautiful newsletter full of positivity and vulnerability. I wrote a few things back showing how I connected with it. I guess I shared too much though, because in one instance he basically wrote back “I understand you’re dealing with a lot of pain, and for my own boundaries, I cannot help you. Best of luck to you.” It was longer than that, but that was the gist of it. That’s what I say when I am out of my depth too. I have another therapist to turn to, don’t worry, and it’s in about a week, but meanwhile I’m just thinking of all the people I have cut off because I wanted one thing in return, and they couldn’t give it to me. I wanted someone to freaking start a conversation with me. What if they can’t? Should they have to?

Does a road have to be two ways to be a friendship?

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