The one where they all stop talking to each other

[j4]

Answering questions about the strength or otherwise of friendships is always hard, but even more so at the moment when I feel like everybody is at odds with each other in one way or another. And, before anybody reaches for shift-8, all the well-intentioned "*hugs*" in the world aren't a substitute for what's missing.

I feel like the strong friendships that I thought would last for years have all fallen away, and I don't know if I was just being naive in thinking that any friendship would last that long. I worry that it's all my fault that my friendships have drifted away, for reasons that I'm not allowed to talk about.

But I feel like I don't have any spare emotional energy to try to rebuild friendships that have faded; and most of all I don't feel I have anything to bring to a friendship at the moment. I don't do anything, I don't think anything, I can't help anybody, I'm neither useful nor beautiful. I don't see what the point would be of trying to force this parcel of misery on people who have enough problems of their own.

The worst of it is that this doesn't make me despair; it just makes me feel flat and empty. I feel like the colour is leaching out of everything, like everything is tending towards zero. And all I can do is sit and watch the world run down like a wind-up toy that has fallen over, no longer running, just kicking slower and slower until finally, imperceptibly, motion becomes motionlessness.

Comments

Re: friends & responsibility

[lnr]

Your own company in front of the television with a box of popcorn, or a good book and nice cup of something, would be 1,000 times better than hanging out with folk who seem to have the emotional sensitivity of a pack of fifteen-year-olds.

What Jan said. And it would get awfully awfully lonely after a while.