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What's the opposite of a fair-weather friend?
Other people do a funny thing that doesn't make much sense to me. See, there are people who want me to fall apart, because apparently me falling apart is part of being friends with them. I can see the reasoning, but it makes me angry.
I know why it happens in at least some cases.
There are people who measure intimacy by how often they see me in moments as weak as theirs. There are people who measure intimacy by how frequently they are permitted to be present during a total breakdown. The only language of love that they understand is being caught in someone else's wreckage; is it any surprise that the best way they know to be a friend to me is to drag me into theirs?
So they wish I'd cry, to assure themselves that if I cried they'd be allowed to see it. They wish I would bleed, to assure themselves that they're the kind of person I'd turn to for help. They want me to need their advice about a situation they can't help me with, because me being let down by their lack of wisdom and perspective is a fair price to pay if it means that they get to congratulate themselves for being someone I'd ask.
When they don't get what they want, when they go for too long without seeing any histrionics, they feel isolated and unwanted and unloved, and so they try to carve out of me what they need to feel included. I'm not saying that it's a constructive response to loneliness to hurt the people who aren't hurting enough where you can see it happening, but I am saying it's a thing people do.
There's a certain intimacy in a good fight. Everything is laid right out and everybody is getting a lot of emotional stimulation and everything in the world besides you, us, this... it all fades. Drama is the only way some people know how to feel connected to other people, to feel engaged, to feel like they are effectual and like the world they're in can touch them with anything meaningful.
Fuck those people.
I find them so distasteful that I'm not even going to focus on them here, because I don't keep them around. I'm primarily talking about your garden variety emotional vampire habit of lashing out at all the people around them to prove that there are living breathing bleeding humans close enough to strike. I'm talking about the usual, "I'm hurting! You need to hurt too!" misery loves company sort of act.
I'm talking about the people who see my armor as a barrier between them and me. But you know what? Maybe it is. If you're going to try to sink your fangs into me and drag me down into your misery with you, you're damn right that the armor is there as a barrier between us. If your only way to feel close to me is damaging to me, you're not going to persuade me that you're the victim here because these steel plates keep catching in your teeth.
I know it's rooted in love, but lots of awful things can be rooted in love and still be awful. I'm not confused about where this is coming from; it's a very real desire for closeness and fellowship with me. I'm just not going to adjust my ways to make people feel loved at the cost of my own stability.
I have too much shit to do to pretend to be less strong or less wise than I am for the sake of consoling people whom I could only comfort by staging a catastrophe my life doesn't need and handing out tickets to only the most select of audiences. I have too much shit to do. I've got real shit to do, and if anybody can help me it's not these people. I'm not going to apologize to these lampreys for my refusal to speak to them in their dysfunctional love language that requires others to bleed affirmation.
I know why it happens in at least some cases.
There are people who measure intimacy by how often they see me in moments as weak as theirs. There are people who measure intimacy by how frequently they are permitted to be present during a total breakdown. The only language of love that they understand is being caught in someone else's wreckage; is it any surprise that the best way they know to be a friend to me is to drag me into theirs?
So they wish I'd cry, to assure themselves that if I cried they'd be allowed to see it. They wish I would bleed, to assure themselves that they're the kind of person I'd turn to for help. They want me to need their advice about a situation they can't help me with, because me being let down by their lack of wisdom and perspective is a fair price to pay if it means that they get to congratulate themselves for being someone I'd ask.
When they don't get what they want, when they go for too long without seeing any histrionics, they feel isolated and unwanted and unloved, and so they try to carve out of me what they need to feel included. I'm not saying that it's a constructive response to loneliness to hurt the people who aren't hurting enough where you can see it happening, but I am saying it's a thing people do.
There's a certain intimacy in a good fight. Everything is laid right out and everybody is getting a lot of emotional stimulation and everything in the world besides you, us, this... it all fades. Drama is the only way some people know how to feel connected to other people, to feel engaged, to feel like they are effectual and like the world they're in can touch them with anything meaningful.
Fuck those people.
I find them so distasteful that I'm not even going to focus on them here, because I don't keep them around. I'm primarily talking about your garden variety emotional vampire habit of lashing out at all the people around them to prove that there are living breathing bleeding humans close enough to strike. I'm talking about the usual, "I'm hurting! You need to hurt too!" misery loves company sort of act.
I'm talking about the people who see my armor as a barrier between them and me. But you know what? Maybe it is. If you're going to try to sink your fangs into me and drag me down into your misery with you, you're damn right that the armor is there as a barrier between us. If your only way to feel close to me is damaging to me, you're not going to persuade me that you're the victim here because these steel plates keep catching in your teeth.
I know it's rooted in love, but lots of awful things can be rooted in love and still be awful. I'm not confused about where this is coming from; it's a very real desire for closeness and fellowship with me. I'm just not going to adjust my ways to make people feel loved at the cost of my own stability.
I have too much shit to do to pretend to be less strong or less wise than I am for the sake of consoling people whom I could only comfort by staging a catastrophe my life doesn't need and handing out tickets to only the most select of audiences. I have too much shit to do. I've got real shit to do, and if anybody can help me it's not these people. I'm not going to apologize to these lampreys for my refusal to speak to them in their dysfunctional love language that requires others to bleed affirmation.