I want to talk about my relationship with others. I’m in a bad head space and want to talk it out to understand and move past what I’m feeling, but because of that bad head space I can’t get my thoughts together.
I have no friends. I have a spouse and his oldest friend as a brother and another of their old friends as a type of friend. Then I have acquaintances I rarely interact with while dishonestly claiming me as one of their own. And of course the innumerable people of my past, all gone now.
Many of my past were toxic. I was born to toxic people who only introduced me to others like them. Little by little I left them all. Others of my past left me because of the toxic traits I didn’t know better than to emulate, while others, as I grew, found me good but too crazy. I never had a real chance.
My anxiety over the matter is high right now for two reasons. First, it’s holiday season and I can’t help but feel the loneliness of my position. Second, I made new friends recently who are coming to my home soon, and I should know better than to enter into a doomed situation. I crave friends. I long for a largish, happy family. I desperately want a community.
There was a time when I cherished my solitude. It was a time when I was never alone, but always lonely. Being with myself and only myself was a sought out luxury. Eventually I built that luxury into my lifestyle. With jobs and volunteering and a social calendar, my solice was a regular part of my life that I reveled in. Now, not so much. Now solitude has become lonely. I think that’s partially because it’s no longer a luxury but rather a constant that’s forced on me; things are always more enjoyable when they’re freely chosen. And also because that solitude is no longer time for me to be with myself. I’m gone. “Badger” no longer exists.
I feel like I was a really good person for a really long time. I liked myself. But that person is gone. And it’s not like she’s replaced with another person and personality, she’s just, gone. I’m a meat sack with electrical connections. How do I begin to explain that? To convey to the people in my life that they shouldn’t be trying to reason with or interact with “Badger” because she’s not there. That going forward I’m an invalid who can voice immediate concerns such as food and sleep, but that’s all they can expect or strive for. I’m just a body existing on this planet until the rest of my parts give up. Every day, I play the role of whom I remember “Badger” to have been. But when I get too weak to keep up the act, I slip into acting out the symptoms of my brain that I can’t keep keeping at bay.
There’s a reason I don’t have friends anymore. I need to remember that and fucking stop trying.
thebadgerspath.com 