Best friend?

It's bizarre. I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and cannot sleep. I lie awake thinking, worrying, fretting.

A few days before Easter. My ex is due to return in the coming days. I long to get away, and have been looking at tickets and hotels to help me realise that.

How has it come to this? Before I used to so long for his presence and for his company... But now I dread seeing him. I feel frustration and this sense of alienation and resentment toward him. Is it because I've been hurt and disappointed too much? Because I (feel I) have been lied to once too many? Is it because at a time when I need someone the most, he of all people was the hardest on me and been dismissive of my attempts to get back on my feet and share what I am going through?

He says he cares, or at least there was a time he said he did. He said he loves me so, or at least said and wrote he did. But for me, I can no longer place any trust or confidence in him. I can find no safety and comfort in him or his embrace. I have lost him, and through his attempts to keep me on the side while pursuing his love interest he has lost all credibility and squandered every faith and hope I have placed in his arms and in heart. The whole episode between my ex and me is a laughable drama and source of ridicule and entertainment. And I let it perpetuate longer than necessary.

I so want to believe, so want to trust that one day we would be together and that this all is just what we need to clear the negativity and misunderstandings between my ex and me. But more and more I feel (and have been told) that I'm too dreamy, too naive! I should get on with my life, stop wasting my energies and youth with someone who tells you what you want to hear but does something to the contrary of what he says.

Too often I have been told by others to be very careful, to be very wary of his intentions.And perhaps only I now am realising what they mean and how I should have insulated myself through unnecessary pain and heartbreak, especially at times when I am most vulnerable. Otherwise why would people now give me that "I told you so" speech and remind me how long ago they have warned me about getting too deeply involved and foolishly waiting for my ex to return? Broken promises, promises made lacking any sincerity or truthfulness.

How did it get this way? I love him so... I care about him so... I gave myself to him, made myself available and vulnerable to him... We had so much! We slept so beautifully in each other's embrace... We traveled together and felt like the word was ours to explore and to own... But that is all some fantasy now. Fantasy turned so sour and relegated to memories... I am so saddened and so bitter by this, and feel I am to blame for much of how things have so soured...

Was I not good enough? Did I not give enough? Did I not love or care about someone the way he needed or deserved to be loved and cared about? Or was it really, as people have told me, that I fell in love and gave myself to someone who does not really care about other people's emotions or lives?

I am the one who is withdrawing and who now treads ever so carefully around him. Despite his attempts to reach me, to open me up, I am the one now who is unwilling to share anything private or personal with him and all around. I have lost that sense of security and trust, and I am closing up. I am turning cold, turning unfeeling.

I just feel nowadays everything I do or say is being scrutinised, spied upon and reported back to my ex who wishes to know every single detail of my life and wellbeing. This incident the other day proved again whatever I do and whoever I am with somehow manages to get back to him hundreds of kilometers away. Is that not creepy? What did I do to feel like I cannot do anything without being watched and without my life being talked about? So I stop sharing. I stop talking. I stop and hold back when I feel or hurt because I feel I am no longer at liberty to be vulnerable as that vulnerability will expose me to hurt and pain. I stop being myself in front of friends because I cannot be myself.

It is sad that I have to defend myself and put on my amour around people I have come to care about and trust. Saddest when the person I must and have been repeatedly warned I must guard against is the very person who once called himself my best friend and soul mate.

I don't feel like being here, hanging around and putting up this pretense in front of friends that all's well and dandy.
I am sick of putting up a show as if these friends of mine are so close when they have become so distant. In past years, I would think of what to do for Easter and try to get the gang together, but now I just want to get away and let the holiday pass.

This is causing me grief, keeping me wide awake...


(funnily enough, the other day my ex asked me the song of this song we both enjoyed so much when it came out.

The words are so powerful now that I hear them again.)

Why are you so hard on yourself?

I have been in touch with this girl my age, a volunteer from the organisation I have been going to to help me process my pain and grief. She lost her mum when she was twenty. It has been over seven years.

Recent experiences with friends make me wonder if I really have friends. I cannot describe how much it hurts when as you describe your feelings, and how to cope and accept them, your friend cuts you off and tells you to just "get on with things". I cannot say how it hurts to hear your best friend, as I am trying to share experiences from my latest counseling session, reject out right the method of dealing with grief that I have been advised. When your own friends, your best friend even, sit there quietly and give you a blank expression as you try to express your emotions, then what is the point of sharing or talking at all?

So I've stopped sharing, I've stopped talking. I've chosen to keep the emotions inside, to keep quiet and pretend that all is well and dandy. That is what people expect from you, is it not? That, sadly,  seems to be what people uncomfortable with death, who have not really seen death, are best at doing. Ignoring death, ignoring there is such a thing as a right to mourn, right to grief, right to take time, right to support... Perhaps it sounds crude how one person put it, but one day when they loose someone so dear to them, they will feel, they will hurt, they too will cry...

So for several weeks now, I've stopped sharing, stopped talking about my emotions with all except  the people I meet at the biweekly counseling sessions and this one girl I have been in touch with. I finally met her in person today.


For almost two hours, we sat at a cafe and shared our experiences. Shared stories, the pain we experienced, the emptiness and loneliness that "get" to us and the roller coaster ride we have no control over. After seven or so years, she said she feels "numb" now... But for a year or two, she lost all interest, all motivation.

I am being too hard on myself, she told me after listening to me talk about my feelings and how I'm trying to cope. I teared as I said to her I just don't want to "disappoint" my parents. My dead parents. Parents who are not even here (physically) to disappoint!

I just hurt when I see myself down and sad. And I hurt even more when most (not all) of who I thought were my closest friends tell me I should just be getting on with life and stop whining. As if I like to whine, as if I enjoy feeling down and sad...

 The girl told me to be patient, to take it easy and go with the flow. It took time for her to heal. It took her years before she could dispose of her mother's belongings ( I have no choice... next week, a shipment of my family possessions is arriving...). It took her time to find herself, to process her emotions and adjust to the new life after her mother's departure.

For me, it has only been 9 months.

What is the hurry? Why am I forcing myself to heal, why should I place myself in situations that make me uncomfortable and be with people who are not helpful at all to my attempts to find myself? I need to be selfish, I need to protect myself. I need to love myself and give myself affection and care that I have for so long been deprived of during all those months and years when my focus was just mum (and all these close ones that slowly disappeared from my life...)

It takes time. It takes time. And I need to be with people who will give me time to heal.