Pixel art hand reaching out

May 3rd, 2024

Cartoon panel of a late 20s catgirl reading 'Betray the false self' from her laptop at her desk.

Feelings from old journals that didn't go away:

I seem to be the only one worried about leaving everyone behind. I wanted to be friends forever. I felt special in the eyes of the people I trusted, and in the environment I was in I would not meet anyone like them ever again. I feared having no friends. One time I described my past friendships to my therapist and she said it sounded like I had never made a friend before. One of my oldest weaknesses is that I don't love myself enough. I still find it so hard to imagine becoming friends with people in my future, let alone when I actually manage to talk to someone in the present.

Betray the false self. I realised I felt disconnected from myself. I used to get caught up in thoughts of being useless or even maligned to my friends because I would "hide things from them" when really I was just in a cycle of communication issues and not being taken seriously. I consider these intrusive thoughts, a false self, and that by betraying her, I am stepping towards self actualisation.

I tend to focus on "how long I got the other person to stay". In the end, I feel like a burden, like if I had more value they would've stayed, they all would've stayed. My therapist said that maybe my childhood best friend saw not talking about it and leaving me alone after our friendship was sabotaged was the safest option in her head. She also brought up things like "Consider that everyone in that situation was only seventeen years old, they behave accordingly." I guess. That's the most my therapist said about me being abused that doesn't veer into dismissive of my feelings.

All my trust and reflection led nowhere. I trusted her so much. I thought we could be close amongst the chaos. Looking back it's hard to imagine I meant anything to her. I experience a lot of this, losing fondness for the past because the people just ended up dismissing me. I grow loneliness on my body like mold, I feel so repulsive irl but I feel so invisible online as well. I feel like I haven't began to live yet. Because there's no solid support for me, from my family, from a community, from anyone. And fucking covid means that any social vulernability becomes a health vulernability as well. I should really do something with that anger.

After sitting on this for a few days, I realised I'm codependent.

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