Ghosts in the rear-view

Since I was a kid, I've dealt with, what you could describe as a "transient" attitude towards my friends. It's rare that I ever kept friends ever longer than a year. And that wasn't due to anything obvious, I wasn't moving house, getting a new job, etc, I just woke up one day and dropped everything I knew and moved on to another friend group. This was an impulsive decision, but not one that I've ever regretted, even in hindsight. But I've also never ever understood why I did it. There was, again no obvious rationale to what I did, apart from one thing.

Quite often, If I couldn't wriggle out of the friendship, I'd push people out, I'd use years of "insider knowledge" to push buttons that I knew would lead to them pushing me out. This was a last ditch effort, and it usually worked, when nothing else did. It was the only thing that was routine about it, manipulative self-sabotage was the metaphorical grenade that I was all too willing to pull the pin of in the case of "an emergency".

I guess, psychologically, that speaks to a lack of care that I had about how I was viewed by people, and also that I no longer cared about their feelings enough that I was willing to throw their biggest "icks" back in their face, even if it meant ruining my reputation. I think I didn't care so much about the latter, because I knew that my new friend group would have nothing to do with the last. It was literally a clean slate. But ultimately, after years of journalling and therapy, I know what was causing it, and little did I know, It was revenge I was projecting on to the people I "chose" to have in my life.

My father was a very complicated man, He was severely disabled but he was also very stern, hard headed and worked every day without fail. He could barely wash himself most mornings, and would need help around the house even for the little things. Fortunately for him, he had two youngsters running around the house who were often up for school early in the morning, that were more than willing to help him out with odd ends, everything from tying his shoes to helping him get in and out of the shower.

He was a very cold and aggressive man, never with the public, always with his kids, obviously including me. Despite the pain and torment of his beatings, I still helped him, but I also feared and resented him to an extent. There were days where I saw parts of him that I admired, but I did fear my father more than anything in the world. It didn't matter how careful I was, there was always something wrong with me, always something I did wrong that I should and would be punished for. It was like sleeping in a room covered in landmines, one wrong move and someone is getting hurt and you are none the wiser as to what you did to cause it.

I couldn't do very much to "tame" him in any way, or to appease him in anyway, but my mother raised me right, I still helped him around the house and never really said much back at him. I did get back at him once when I was a teenager and after that, the confrontations because far rarer than they ever had been. Largely because he had been scared into changing his ways. But several years ago, everything clicked in my mind, while talking to a streamer friend of mine, and I realised that, what I was doing to my friends was a way of paying back a certain debt that I owed to myself.

I spent much of my childhood wanting to put my foot down about my dad disrespecting or abusing me, but I couldn't and largely didn't. So, when he died, and I was in my late teens, working jobs and studying at college and developing my own friend group away from my family and extended family. I no longer allowed any type of crossing my boundaries, and they wouldn't get any warning because I simply wouldn't give them any. Largely because this thought process wasn't front and centre of my mind, It was running in the background.

Every time I "recycled" my friend group, It was in response to something, it wasn't an action, or a comment, again it wasn't obvious, it was in the context of what was happening and not a singular event. It was always in response to a feeling that I was no longer getting anything from the friendship. I was being taken advantage of in a way that wasn't explainable or forgivable. I was expelling all my emotional energy into maintaining something that clearly had no respect for me.

So rather than cutting people off based on what they did or didn't do for me, I cut everyone off related to those people. I didn't want to communicate with that person or hear their name again. I just wanted to forget they existed and move on. Even if that meant walking away from people who hadn't done anything wrong. I simply didn't want the risk of those friends pulling me back into those people's orbits, and in that moment that isolation from those people was more important than my proximity to people who liked or cared for me.

At my core, I'm non-confrontational. I don't like arguing with people and I certainly don't like rebutting accusations even when I know they're not true. Because I know if you are in a position where someone is pointing fingers at you, there is nothing you can say or do to prove that they're wrong, they've already made their mind up and the last thing they wanna hear is you dispelling anything they already think about you. So in those circumstances, It's better to just let them think what they want, and walk off into the sunset, because eventually they'll forget who you are, and vies versa.

Arguing with my dad anytime he accused me of something would mean another trip to the hospital, so it was also easier that way. Realising that the way that I had treated my friends, was ultimately about resetting a debt I think I owed to myself that I wish I had kept with my dad but didn't. That realisation helped me communicate far better with my current friends, It helped me in areas that I didn't realise I needed help in. It helped me understand myself, and ultimately other people. The veil was lifted and the mindless auto-pilot I was operating on when it came to life had finally been switched off.

For one, when you have the blinders on and you are operating just in accordance to what your subconscious thinks you need in a given moment, you tend to ignore what is just outside of the blinders. Like a girl crushing on you, I had no romantic interest during that period from the age of 18 to the age of 26, I was vaguely interested in a future with a partner, but I wasn't looking or planning on that future.

Nowdays, I have a pretty solid group of friends from every corner of the world, and I have a partner who I've been with for 2 months. I finally have connection with people who I can be open with and hold, maintain and reset boundaries with. I, no longer fear my old friends wandering back into my life and me being "confronted" largely because I know that I don't exist in their minds anymore. The only person who feared that situation was me because I sat with a guilt that was also not a guilt of walking away, and what I learned from that situation as a whole was that.

When you are the one who walks away from a situation, they will absolutely forget you. But you will never forget who they were, who they are and the rest of your life will be a paranoid bubble that you will spend weeks, if not years floating around in. Until that bubble eventually pops. I think the best advice I have for anyone who see's themselves in what I used to do is this, If you get the urge to walk, talk to someone who isn't in your friend group, most importantly, talk to yourself and get a bearing of why you are walking away. Try to understand your own reaction to walking away, because I don't want you to stew in your own social anxiety for years, scared of who or what will walk out of the closet.

You can't spend the rest of your life like a little kid who is scared of the dark, because there isn't really a night light or a parental figure who will come in and save you, you sometimes have to save yourself from the monsters.