I avoid making friends. If you’re not someone I knew from before I went into hiding in 2020, then your chances of befriending me are zero. This doesn’t mean I have anything against you, I might actually still be quite friendly, I just avoid having closer contact. I fear that if I let people believe we’re friends, one day push will come to shove and I’ll prioritize my hyper-sensitive paranoid self-preservation which might feel like a hurtful betrayal to them.
Friendships have put me through a lot of stress before, and they are a lot of responsibility. I don’t want that anymore. Some might still try, a lot have tried before, but even if you feel like it will be different for you, it’s not going to work, and if it looks like it’s working, that’s probably not good.
Again, that doesn’t mean I can’t be friendly with people, and I’m also way more receptive to people I already knew, but I just don’t want anyone to think the social contract has been signed… I will not prioritize other people’s well being over mine, and I will not trust anyone. I don’t think that can be called a friendship. My only friendships are Kat and someone I knew from before, who has managed to stay aligned with what is important to me despite little incentive for them to do so.
I’ll risk looking very evil, but for the sake of honesty and transparency, I’ll simulate what WOULD happen if I were to befriend anyone: Say I meet person X, and person X really likes my stuff, person X manages to get me to be friendlier than usual. I get attached to person X and decide to lower the barrier, and we actually share a lot of interests and very good ideas. Person X really thinks we are good friends. Then one day I come to learn that person X likes something that makes me feel bad. Or that person X is very close to someone who I still resent and person X endorses them. Person X is now blocked. I move on.
It takes one wrong link, one wrong image, one wrong connection, one wrong idea for me to entirely disown someone off my life. People have to be constantly walking on eggshells to just be around me. If that sounds like friendship, then I have a very different idea of friendship.
I don’t really want to talk about WHAT caused me to be like this, so all I’ll say is that things happened in the past that made me REALLY regret interact with people who I considered friends. In some situations I tried, and it made things worse, for everyone. In others I was just straight up backstabbed. In others my OCD is what made things fall apart. Friendships are just unnecessary stress to me. I really don’t need to take this risk. I have Kat and I can be friendly with strangers from a safe distance.
I really thought this could change when I first returned. Maybe it still can… but I feel like since then I got WAY sturdier in how much I want to avoid friendships. I don’t want to give anyone false hopes. If you’re worried about interacting with me, maybe there is a good reason HERE ([08] CONTENT OF MY TRAUMA), and if that’s true, don’t let me know. I will not be rude or start drama, it’s only a matter of cutting contact because I can’t handle any of that.
You seem like a very kind person. If you ever decide you want to try having friends again, I would really love to get to know you. I feel like I can relate to a lot of what you said, and especially about your fears of someone hurting you and you hurting them back, or wanting to isolate yourself from everyone for periods of time. But alas, I'm just some dude on the internet, please feel free to disregard this if you desire, I just want you to know that I'm rooting for ya, and I imagine most others who read this are rooting for you too.
You seem like a very kind person. If you ever decide you want to try having friends again, I would r
