Peas In A Pod

Lately, I've been feeling more lonely and depressed than ever. It's been like this for a while actually.

I used to daydream as an escape, now it's my daydreams I need to escape from. The non-stop stories in my head that go around and around and around are making me sick. There's too much static in my mind. The worst days are when the thoughts and stories in my head have been reduced to noise, where I'm thinking so many thoughts at once they are all jumbled together and are not making any sense. Sometimes I can't hold on to a thought long enough to work it out, and other times, I'm stuck on a single thought that stalks me to exhaustion. It's goes with this unsettling feeling of restlessness and exhaustion, but what's really frustrating is that I'm not doing anything that could cause me to be this tired. I really think it's my thought processes that are taking a toll on my body. I'm so emotionally done. I'm mentally exhausted and it's dragging my body and soul with it. Not to sound overly dramatic or anything. It's just how I feel.

I can't stand this loneliness anymore. And yet, I have no real desire to go out with so-called friends or to make new ones. I can barely get out of bed in the morning, I don't have the kind of energy it takes to start a new friendship or even to maintain the ones that have.

I watched a horrible, simplistic little popcorn flick called Bride Wars today. While I can't really relate to that kind of borderline psychotic obsession with having the perfect wedding, the movie was really about the bonds we make in our lifetime and the importance of maintaining those relationships that really matter. The two main characters played by Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson (I've already forgotten their character names) have been best friends since childhood, having always been there for each other through all the important transitions in their lives. And I found myself feeling very sad because I miss having that with someone. I miss having a best friend.

My childhood best friend snubbed me in high school, then moved to a big city for a year and came back gay. When she returned we were on friendly terms again, but our friendship had been broken beyond repair. And I'm sure she never gave it a second thought. I, on the hand, was absolutely devastated when I lost her. She was my other half. We were inseparable. Two peas in a pod as my mom would say, or the "giggling idiots" as this cute blond kid used to call us.

I can't help but feel that the end of this friendship had some sort of permanent effect on me. When I try and dissect my feelings from this time, I keep coming back to this one moment when I was 13, and I realized what was eating me up inside: I felt abandoned and betrayed. And I remember feeling like it would never end. That I would always feels that way. Over time, it became less painful, but I never forgot her, and I never stopped wishing we were still friends. But that's a major fault of mine. I'm always looking behind me at what's already passed.

After her, I did make another best friend in high school. But she always expected me to follow her lead, which I was content to do most of the time, only because I didn't know how to be me. There was so many times I wished I had stood up to her, wished I hadn't let her put me in uncomfortable situations. It wasn't until the senior years that I started to have more of a backbone. And then it was like her true nature came out. I had the sweetest boyfriend at this time, and instead of being happy for me, she was bitterly jealous. Needless to say, our friendship didn't last, not even to graduation. Lonely again.

(I had made another friend, who I eventually came to consider my best friend, but we grew apart when she moved away. We were re-united when I moved to this glorious city. I met my significant other at my best friend's wedding. How cheezy is that?)

Enter the college years. When my high school sweetheart and I broke up, I made a lot of friends. The only problem was they were all boys. And I wish boys made good friends but they don't. At least, not in my experience. I gained somewhat of a reputation for leading boys around on a string. But they didn't understand. I wasn't trying to mislead anyone. I just thought they were my friends. I hate being proven wrong. When a relationship developed with one of them, the rest disappeared.

Luckily, I did make one girl friend. And we were close enough through college and most of university. Only it wasn't unconditional, not for her. I went through a phase that she didn't like and we grew apart. She later told my ex, it was because she didn't like how I had changed or something. It was when I was undergoing these "changes",that I first saw a doctor about my depression. And it wasn't my best friend who took me. It was a new friend I had made. She was there for me when my own best friend had turned her nose up at me. Going to this doctor was exactly what I had always feared: humiliating and unhelpful. I broke down and started crying, and he told me to stop it, and he shoved a prescription down my throat.

That was how I began the roller coaster ride of anti-depressants. I gained 25 lbs in that first month of medication. It took a few tries to find one that helped, a little. I started seeing a therapist at the university. It may be the only reason I was able to graduate, barely.

I'm getting off-track again. Big surprise. Obviously, that friendship didn't last past university. But we still keep in contact through the infamous Facebook. She's married and has two kids and a career. Life seems pretty perfect for her. And yes, I'm a little jealous. But also sad that I've missed out on these important transitions. She posts videos of her kids and I just about cry. Her first born looks just like her.

Even though I still have that one friend that I know I can count on, the one who introduced me to the V, I have a hard time considering her to be my "best friend". I'm not sure when this happened. I tell myself it was the moment things got serious with the V, but I think it began sooner than that. And I feel awful about it. Was it just because there was too much of a gap in our friendship? She moved away and came back more than once in the teenage years. And then she moved to the city for a long time before I came here. Or is it a stubborn remembrance of how things were when we were kids? She is bold and not shy and extremely bossy.

I'm starting to think my inability to feel close to her is because I feel a lack of control over my own life. It's like a pathetic defense mechanism. I don't want her to control me so I distance myself from her, instead of being a grown-up and living my own life according to my own rules. I forget that nobody can force me to do anything. It's been my own choices that have led me to where I am today. If I'm completely honest, I think I blame her for my being in a relationship that is not right for me. Wow, that's embarrassing. But it's true. When I think back to what happened with her cousin, the V, I find myself feeling...angry. Why couldn't she see that I wasn't ready to be in another serious relationship after what happened with the last one. Instead, it seems like she pushed us together for her own reasons, because she thought, oh, wouldn't it be neat if you married my cousin, and then we could be family, and build houses next to each other, and raise our children together, and we would all live happily ever after. I wish that's the way it went down. I wish I could feel content to live this life. I wish this is what I wanted. And what if it really is? What if my depression has chewed up everything inside for so long, that I can't even tell what's real anymore? I don't trust myself. I don't trust my feelings. What if the only reason I'm not happy with him, is because I'm not happy with myself?

I think I've said enough. I'm going to try not to worry about the lack of coherence in this post.