Thread by @usagiko

I've doing some serious reflection on friendships as of late, just generally.

So let's talk about that.

Illness has a way of telling you who your real friends are. It's a litmus test, the most basic one.

Some will step up.
Some won't.
Some can't.

It's basic, something we should know in our cells. Genetic memory. The oldest question.

Something older than oil or timber. Something that goes back to the first realization that we aren't alone, that there are other beings around us.

Do we attack them, and protect ourselves? Or attack ourselves and protect them?

The voice of the amygdala.

A whisper. A hoarse voice that spins at the base of your skull. Protect or attack?

Somewhere along the way we stopped asking. We chose the third option: neither. The choice to exist regardless.

We chose the fourth option: do both. Protect and attack each other simultaneously.

And so we composed a narrative. We told ourselves a story so we could reconcile regrets, of mistakes.

As humans, each time we remember something, we remember the best possible version. We overwrite ourselves in real time.

And then we shifted the narrative as we evolved: selfish or selfless? The voice faded, turned into something else.

But we still hear its whisper.

And so I find myself asking, when is it permissible to be selfish?

The narrative has shifted again in this current time. We link the first narrative to the second, and we ask: selfish and protecting ourselves? Or selfless and protecting someone else, in what results as an attack by neglect?

And so I ask myself these questions. At what point do I give up? At what point do I leave? And is it justified?

I have mulled this question again and again, and I know the answer now.

And it's an answer that hurts in it's vicious simplicity.

I am at that point, where it would be permissible to leave. And that auto-rewrite that happens to us neurologically each time we remember will remake it, will soothe my conscious, will whisper that I did everything I could to stay, that this was my final option.

But the problem is, that voice, that ghost of several tens of thousands of years ago, still asks -

Did you really do everything you could to salvage this relationship? Are you sure?

And perhaps that speaks to the ways I am damaged as a person.

So now the two narratives fight. They try to drown each other out. And while they do that, I ask myself -

Do I have to decide? Is there an option where I can live and let live without it feeling like an acid burn, even as it's rewritten by my brain.

But I know the answer.

Things have been heading this way for a while now. I don't think I would've been able to dodge this argument with myself, and in the end, I've just been barreling towards it. Maybe we both have.

The fact that I have almost no information with which to make this decision is the worst part.

Because somewhere in the process, my access to that was denied for reasons beyond my control.

We want to be believe that all close friendships can last forever.

But what we don't talk about is that auto-rewrite.

We don't talk about how things change.

We don't talk about how people change. Or motives, or the realities that inform and back them.

We don't talk about how needs change.

Most importantly, we don't talk about the work that's required to make things last.

It's like we're afraid to.

We pay that work lipservice collectively as a culture.

We don't talk about how that work can genuinely be the most fulfilling part of a relationship - because in this way, you allow yourself to get closer.

You permit access.

You allow someone to exist inside of you. You give them a place.

Sometimes, we have to make each other work for that place, to keep it.

Because that's what we owe to ourselves and to each other.

Makes sense, right?

I desperately want to believe I have exhausted every avenue to salvage things after so many years of friendship.

But sometimes relationships, and people can't be saved.

It goes back to access.

It goes back to what we believe we deserve.

If you do not genuinely believe that you deserve nice things, healthy things, that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to start believing I deserved good things.

The problem is that I'm not sure the other party has.

And there's NOTHING I can do to change her mind there. That's a conclusion all of us have to reach ourselves.

In other people's stories, we have all been both the heroes and villains.

We have to actively forgive ourselves in order to go forward, and do the work.

We have to do the work - because self-care is holding yourself accountable for that growth.

Self-care is holding yourself accountable for how you treat both yourself and others, as well as how you let yourself be treated.

Sometimes genuinely bad shit happens &you end up getting hurt. Because that's the way we are, we're still wired like animals.

Sometimes self-care is recognizing you were helpless & things were out of your hands, and choosing not to punish yourself got how people have hurt you.

Sometimes self-care is choosing to go forward and heal and walk around with the knowledge that sometimes things are out of our hands.

And that's terrifying.

I am trying to take that path. And it's not easy - I trip and fall more days than not.

But I keep trying, regardless.

Because I deserve that much.

I've been a hero and a villain. But I'm trying to grow.

Do the work. It's messy and frustrating but it's fulfilling, in the end. Because you can look back and see how far you've come.

So the voice asks me again.

A new question has formed.

Do you feel you deserve love and kindness, or don't you?

I find myself struggling to answer.

Sometimes showing someone you love them is holding up a mirror, and showing them their flaws, and asking them to do the work.

She may not be able to.

And because she may not be able to, because of whatever reason, maybe I just need to try forgiveness, hold open the door, and say that whenever you're ready, I'm here. But until then, I deserve better than what you can give me.

So for now, I've shelved the question. Because I am tired, and I deserve better than running myself into the ground.

I pray I'm making the right choice. I fear that I'm not.

But I don't think I'll have regrets this way. Because I have tried, and tried.

This got way WAY longer than it was originally intended.

Tl;dr love yourself enough to know when you need to walk away.

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