I've been pretty conflicted on whether to post this or not but since it's Men's health month, I figure it's as good a time as any to share some things and it feels good to write about it and put it out into the ether.
I've been MIA for a while on basically any comms platform mostly because I've been going through several rather shitty things all at once in my personal life and still continue to do so.
One of the biggest challenges through all this has been dealing with a deep, lifelong feeling of self-loathing that has made it nearly impossible to believe that anyone would ever want to talk to me let alone be friends with me. As a result when I am so overwhelmed with problems that it's all I'd want to talk about, I simply don't reach out to people to initiate conversations. When people initiate conversations with me I strictly stick to whatever the conversation is supposed to be about and try to give the appearance that everything is fine because I don't want to be a burden.
As a part of starting to deal with the self-hatred, I've reached the point where I realize that shutting everyone out has been the worst possible thing I could do for my own well being. I feel a lot of shame for basically ghosting everyone in my life but thanks to a lot of therapy and Devon Price's new book "Unlearning Shame" (which I am still working my way through) I realize that I need to be much more forgiving with myself and accept that my view of myself is rather distorted. I now realize that sharing tough things with people builds bonds, and that I can do it in a consensual way without just trauma dumping on someone who isn't necessarily in a position to handle it at that moment.
I have never been terribly close to my family and I genuinely don't have much family left, but I've avoided talking to them more than a couple messages per year for far too long, especially my only sister and my nephew, who is now a teenager and who I have not seen in several years. My sister and I have always gotten along very well, and our conversations when we do see each other always feel like we just pick up right where we left off last time. I plan on remedying the disconnect soon with a visit to see them and have already reconnected with my sister, even if it has been as a result of something negative.
I've never had a lot of friends either, but I've completely retreated away from the few people I would definitely call friends. I've been stuck in my own head, playing out hypothetical scenarios of everyone ignoring me and abandoning me for being "too much". I've taken away everyone else's ability to participate in relationships with me and made the decision to not talk to me on their behalf.
It's not going to be easy for me to ignore the part of me that hates myself. But I'm hoping over the next weeks and months to reconnect with the people that have never given me any actual reason to doubt their friendship, and I have a nervous excitement about feeling like I have some friends again. I am especially nervous about sharing more about the things I've been going through with them, but I now know that is a nervousness entirely concocted in my brain and not based in objective reality.
Thank you for reading.