ALRIGHT. It's been a bit since I've been here but I thought I'd come in to jot down some thoughts. This is going to be a HUGE post combined with a lot of recent stresses that have piled up. I'm already past a lot of these and really just wanted to post here to make sure I really have let go of my biggest stressor. I need to be able to move forward and start healing and get to a point where I can really be myself again and I can't do that without doing this. To those that actually read this whole thing I give you kudos. Thanks for taking such an interest and I hope you'll still accept all that you see.
First things first: End of Ranked Season 6
If you've been following my blog you know I always struggle around the time that ranked season has ended. Every year I feel a need to be equal of my boyfriend to prove that I am good enough for him or some weird shin-dig like that. This year worked a bit different. I struggled ALL year trying to climb and in the end was never able to. Bubble, being the fantastic boyfriend he is, said he would wait for me so he wouldn't leave me behind like he has in past seasons. I was so thankful for that and relied on it the whole season. Knowing that even though all my friends were growing higher than what they had last year, I wasn't going to be the only one stuck in gold. The issue this year, ended up with the difference that came from me being unable to obtain my original goal. I could tell very early on in the season I wasn't going to make my original goal for the season (Plat 1 and possibly diamond. having finished plat 3 last season it should have been possible). I performed pretty much the exact same as the rest of my friends in their placements but I was the ONLY ONE to get place silver. Again, I did the exact same as others who placed plat with me and I got placed a whole tier lower than them....I was so upset. Thankfully I was able to get gold again right away but the battle to get back to plat proved to be too much. I got stuck in gold 5 for months and months. Eventually I broke out and managed to get to gold 2 but I haven't been able to get farther than that and have found myself stuck in gold 3. The season ends this weekend and it really frustrated me that I performed so poorly. How in the world did I go from plat 3 to gold 3?? I found myself doubting my skills as a player and I was getting really angry and falling into some bad play patterns. I took a break for a bit and didn't even sign on for a whole week. It was actually pretty nice. When I got back on I decided to give it one more go to try to climb. maybe make gold 1 before end of season. While doing so, a good amount of my friends that were on, who did reach diamond this season, kept rooting me on saying that I could still do and they believed in me. That's really when it hit me. I was trying so hard to get the game to prove that I was a good player via the rank it displayed, when those I actually wanted to play with, and enjoyed playing with were acknowledging that I was a good player and despite being stuck down for a season they still believed in me as a player. I was able to accept my rank at that point and while I'm still frustrated with myself for not only not reaching my goal, but placing a whole tier lower than what I did last season, deep down I knew that it didn't really matter and my friends would still be my friends no matter what I placed. Then it hit me. Through all of this bubble had been waiting for me. Sitting 1 win away from being plat all season. I had done what I'd been trying to avoid doing: become a burden. Now I want so desperately for him to get plat. I want to celebrate being plat with him. He would have gotten diamond this season if he hadn't stopped for me because of what happened in past seasons and that kills me inside. Now he may not even get plat. He says he doesn't care and will never leave me behind again but I still worry. We still have a few days so hopefully we can still get it for him :) In the end, for me, this nightmareish season has finally come to an end and I can finally move on and start over. Here's to season 7 and hopefully getting back to plat!
Finances and Work
This became a huge stressor at the end of september. I found out that my financial aid had been taken away from me for school because I had been waived out of a course thus no longer met the credit requirements to receive aid. I had to spend all my savings to pay for my classes because I wasn't prepared to cover the expenses (because I expected fin aid to do it). Not long after I receive an email from my loan service. They got this report from my campus and my status as a student fell below the level necessary to keep my loans on deferment from my undergrad. So not only did I just deplete the entirety of my savings to stay in school, but I also now have to start paying my loans off. Now, I don't work full-time officially. I'm in a graduate assistantship program so I'm only supposed to work half time and be a student the other half time (which creates a full time position). The reality of this though is that I still work full-time but only get paid part-time. I work on average 10 hours over what I'm supposed to each week and I'll never see a cent of compensation. The fact that now the majority of my paychecks each month have to go to the loan service, but that I'm still being overworked hit hard and I got a lot of work stress. I dreaded going to work each day and some days just didn't go because I was sick and tired of being overworked and now super broke. It's funny because some people have questioned me about the fact that I am in queue for AF. "If you're that broke, why'd you get in queue in the first place." "Are you getting your money back because of this?" and honestly I'm super offended people have even related the two. I saved for my AF suit for years. I put the funds in a separate account and didn't touch it. I've signed a contract and will not be getting any of that money back ever. Even if I cancelled the suit I wouldn't ask for the money back. That's never fair to the maker. Also I'm not THAT broke. I know how to manage my finances so I'll be okay I just can't afford to do the same things I used to on my income. Like commission artists, attend conventions, go out to eat, etc. I can only buy necessities (food) and that's it. Well, that's if I want to go to MFF. If I cancel my trip to MFF I can do those things but MFF is more important because I want to catch up with friends who are close to me so I HAVE to closely monitor my spending. As of now I'm on track to afford it but if I slip up and splurge even once that would throw my whole trip off. That kind of pressure is very difficult to handle. I'm sure I'll be okay though! I believe in myself and while I'm walking a fine line, a lot of good things are coming my way in 2017 so I just have to hold out a bit longer. In the meantime, I'm cutting back hours at work to try to even things out. Mostly cause I'm sick of it and secondly because if my boss wants to contest it I can demand extra payment for that work. I've been clocking all my hours the past 3 months so I have that for support of what I've done. ANYWAYS. Enough of that.
The following is why I'm really writing this all out today. As a disclaimer I will be including names in this post but do NOT under any circumstances be rude to any of the people mentioned here. I judge everyone based on how they treat me and NOTHING ELSE. I ask you do the same. Also note I have a really biased opinion of them so obviously this story comes from one side. If you're friends, or wanting to be friends with any of the people involved, please just talk to them about it. You have to be able to be honest and share your feelings with your friends. If you can't do that, can you really be friends with them?? That's the moral of this story so please please PLEASE keep that in mind. I'm also only posting this so I can stop carrying it around with me so that I can move forward. That's what this blog is for so I'm using it for that purpose. If you disagree with any of this I suggest you stop reading here and move on with your life. Anyone who attacks me for this will be instantly blocked but you are welcome to ask questions about it should you feel the need you want to hear more from me on the subject.
Friends
Now a bit of background to my life. My parents have been divorced ever since I was very very little. Thanks to this, I moved around a lot when I was younger with my mom as she re-established her life. This meant changing schools and constantly having to say good-bye to friends. I'm fairly confident during this process I was unable to develop some key friend making social skills as a child thus still struggle making friends. I never had any for the majority of grade school. I was physically abused and bullied all through middle school (each new school I went to there was always someone new there that would hurt me). I've been beat, dragged across the ground by my ponytail, and ganged up on. When I finally ended at a school that I thought I had a friend, I found out that she was using me and dropped me from her life as soon as she could. The first real friend I had wasn't until I was 20 and developed out of a different abuse situation (it was the best friend of a guy who had been...well, anyways, that's not important). Thankfully to this day we still stay in touch. Because of my past I have developed a really weird friend complex. The easiest way to explain it is the relationships I hold with people are as follows: my friends are as close to me as society would consider a best friend. My best friends are those people who are even greater than that. Those best friends you see and you know without a doubt they're inseparable and will be friends for a long time. To this day I have 1 best friend and 2 friends. This does not include a few people who I'm developing friendships with and society would consider us friends but by my weird standards we're not quite there yet. I don't really need more than what I have but I try not to turn down anyone in the chance that I may get another friend. After I made the three friends listed above I started to transition out of college and into adult life. I was confident and eager to meet many people. It was at this time I met Rebel. Her and I did a ton of things together within the furry fandom. We'd constantly carpool and attend events together and everyone around us could see we were growing to be close friends. Now as I'm developing relationships with friends I make sure to let them know about my past and weird friend standards so they know how much they mean to me. I was realizing how close Rebel and I were growing and told her how I considered her to be one of my best friends. She accepted at the time and with her at my side I felt I could do anything and started meeting and befriending more people than ever. That was three years ago and sadly the happiness didn't last long. The spark for it all was when I graduated and had to move away for work. We stayed in pretty good contact for the first year or so and it was easy and enjoyable to see her when I was in town. We'd mutually invite each other to events and enjoy talking the days away.
I'm not quite sure how to explain the transition from that to what has happened, but of course our lives went on, and as they did I noticed more and more of our group chats would die. She was spending more time with other people and telling me more of how busy she was and didn't have time to talk. I've known for a long time that Rebel doesn't like texting/using chat services so I always respected that. I never measured relationships on the amount of time spent talking online anyways. Anyone who was my friend at any point knows this about me. I started to feel like I was getting pushed out of her life. A few things happened that really started to concern me. As I continued to support her work as an artist and as a friend she was ignoring that more and more. I'd come and visit her in streams and see her actively communicating with the rest of her (our) friends and when I'd jokingly question why I wasn't involved she'd change the subject. When we were getting rooms for FM and MFF, which we had previously talked about and given our word we'd share together at the previous cons, she quickly chose not to room with me and go with other people. I stepped up for myself and I still didn't get to room with her. She found enough excuses as to why it didn't make sense and I didn't want to argue/make her upset so I just let it go. Please note, that around this point, I can tell I'm being pushed out of her life and it's terrifying me. I'd never lost a best friend like this and wanted to do anything to get her back. I started feeling like I needed to buy back her friendship. Spending money on gifts I know she'd love because they'd match the things that her new best friend had. Let me tell you how great it feels to see a friend be more excited to the person she now matches about her gift than the one who gave it to her. I felt like a burden. Even in person I was started to get left behind and she wasn't really listening to things I was saying. She didn't show that she cared about any good news and didn't seem to care that I was excited for her good news. I messaged her on facebook asking if everything was okay between us. Said I was worried I had done something wrong and sorry if I offended her. She said I had done nothing and nothing was wrong. I was still worried but wanted to trust her that we were okay. I started getting ignored after that.
She wasn't responding to my messages and I was afraid to text her since she didn't like text. I couldn't call her cause she kept telling me how busy she was so I didn't want to take up any of her precious time since she apparently didn't have that much. During all this time she kept communicating and growing closer with other friends that were still local. It was like a double standard! I could tell I was being pushed out but couldn't do anything about it cause I wanted to respect what she had told me.
This past summer, a time had come that I was going to visit home. I wanted so desperately to meet with her and talk everything out in person, just the two of us. I debated for a long time about how to contact her. She wasn't even looking at my facebook messages anymore so I knew I couldn't contact her that way and she'd removed me from her social groups on other texting platforms so I didn't feel comfortable talking to her that way either. The way she'd been responding to me last time I saw her in person made me think she didn't even want to be around me anymore so I couldn't bring myself the courage to talk to her. I'd messaged Soupy, her new best friend, and she thankfully agreed to give me some time when I was in town but wasn't sure when that would be. I just asked that she let me know and that I'd be super flexible to her busy schedule. I had made plans with a couple other local friends to hang out as well. I had posted a status to facebook about me returning home and Rebel had liked it so I figured she thus knew I was going to be in town. That's when everything turned bad.
While in town, on a thursday I finally got the courage to message Rebel on facebook during a time she was being active on facebook so I figured she'd have time. She never actually opened the message so whether or not she actually saw it was up in the air but previous messages I had sent to her on facebook were also still unread (EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE RESPONSES TO A QUESTION SHE HAD ASKED ME!!). My assumption is she saw the message blurb pop up, saw what it said and just pushed it aside, never really opening it. It's not saturday, my trip is set to end early the following week. I'd met with all my friends except soupy and rebel, neither of whom had gotten back to me. I saw soupy make a post on facebook implying that she needed to do some shopping so was going to go out to the MOA for the day. I didn't say anything to her, even though I was pretty offended she didn't invite me along even though she said she would give me some time and I had previously suggested we meet up at a mall for food or something. Instead of being mad at her I decided to text Rebel finally to see if I'd actually get a response. Two hours later she's posting pictures of herself out at the mall with Soupy enjoying the day away. That was the last straw. I was too hurt. She had time to go hang out at the mall but no time to read messages from someone who she had last called a best friend.
I called her out on it, below is our conversation:
Saturday
1:31pm Me: "You know what, don't respond. I don't care anymore. I was going to invite you out so we could talk about whatever happened between us in hopes we could fix our friendship but clearly you want nothing to do with me. I don't even know what I did wrong. I'm sorry I mistreated you so bad you feel the need to avoid me and I hope your new friends work better for you. Bye."
2:05pm Rebel: "Alrighty. I was at the mall and my phone was in airplane mode to save battery."
2:13pm Me: "I messaged you Thursday. You also knew I was going to be in town."
2:15pm Rebel: "Where'd you message me? And you never mentioned being in town"
2:18pm Me: "I didn't mention it to you personally because I assumed you didn't want to see me. But you had liked the status I posted about me being in town :/ I messaged you on facebook when you were on. I figured when you were out posting on it using your phone you would have at least seen my message. So I guess I'm sorry if I misundertood that."
2:22pm Rebel: "I guess I didn't know there was anything wrong? I didn't realize you were upset because I didn't see anything wrong"
2:23pm Me: "Which is why I wanted to invite you out to talk. To me you feel near impossible to get a hold of these days so I assumed I had done something to make you so mad you didn't want to be friends anymore."
2:35pm Me: "Listen, I really don't want to lose you. But is things aren't going to work out for us I'd rather them end on positive terms. I'm going to be at suit up saturday tonight. If you're there we can talk and if not I still wouldn't mind talking in person. I'll be in town until mid/late next week."
Sunday
9:32am Me: "Well whenever you get a chance let me know. Just texting to let you know that a few people asked about how you were doin last night, thought you might like to know."
Tuesday
10:16am Me: "Today is the last day I have here. If you would at least tell me you don't want to talk I'd appreciate it. If you continue not to respond I'll just assume you really don't want to be friends and leave you alone forever. If that ends up being the case I guess thanks for the fun times we did have, sorry I seemed to have hurt you so much you felt the need to avoid me completely, and good luck in your future.
6:16pm Rebel: "I'm not really sure what I did other than nothing. You live four hours away, I have friends that live further away that I haven't spoken to in just as long that haven't suddenly decided that I hate them because they understand that we're busy."
6:50pm Me: "I know it feels sudden to you but there is more to it, I promise I'm not completely delusional. I also count you as one of my best friends and I think I've told you what that means to me. If not, I'm sorry. I know I live far away and don't expect the kind of relationship we're able to have when we're close but we haven't really had much if any relationship since I had to move. I know very well I haven't done as much as I'd like to try and stay close with you but I've felt like you haven't tried at all (which is just how I've felt to a point and could be wrong and I may have missed everything you've done, which is why I've wanted to talk) this kind of thing is hard to talk about over text."
"So what are we going to do? What do you want?"
9:00pm Me: "How do I make you the happiest?"
10:04pm Rebel: "I don't have the time or energy to go out of my way to be friends with someone who expects me to read minds instead of just talking and communicating what you want. If you wanted to stay friends just talk once in a while. Don't blow up at me for not living up to your expectations that I have no idea about. I don't text, in general, I don't really talk in general. We didn't text much when you lived here, in my mind nothing has changed yet I'm being scrutinized for not knowing what you wanted."
10:16pm Me: "I did apologize for that, it was harsh because I let my feelings get the best of me, again I'm sorry for that. and it's not about not texting and not talking. That means nothing. You never gave me a chance to explain that, or anything. I know you don't like messaging or texting which is why I wanted to talk in person."
10:22pm Me: "I promised myself I'd respect your decision though. I'll leave you be."
That's the last we've spoken. I've lived up to what I said and not approached her or said anything. I was SUPER nervous about going to FM because I would see her in person. Also, after this all happened I immediately apologized to soupy saying that I hope whatever happens between Rebel and I doesn't hurt her too much and was sorry for the trouble it would cause her. I had gotten no response from her and had no idea how she had taken everything. When I got to FM the first thing I noticed is that Rebel was doing everything in her power to avoid me. She would leave the room if she was available when I was in the same room and on multiple occasions drastically changed the path in which she was walking to avoid having to pass me. I felt it was a bit extreme seeing as I told her I'd respect her decision and leave her be but I figured she wasn't really listening to me still so she felt the need to avoid me still. At one point I did approach soupy though and asked for a hug. She obliged and I thanked her and didn't say anything more. Later in the con I felt bad cause I didn't want my presence to ruin Rebel's con so I approached soupy again and told her Rebel didn't have to worry so much and that I would leave her alone like I said. Things seemed like they would be good enough between us. After the con I got back and thanked her. The fact that she didn't hate me gave me hope that I could move forward and that not all was lost because of what happened between Rebel and I. Soupy told me that what I had done did hurt her and she wasn't the most comfortable being around me. I understood and told her that if she really wanted I'd leave her be just as I did Rebel but that she at least give me a chance to share my side of the story before she made her judgement. A couple days later I realized how stupid that was. Why in the world should I have to defend myself to Soupy when she pushed me aside and went back on her word. I told her I appreciated that she gave me a chance but I didn't want it. Called her out on the fact that she too had hurt me but that I wasn't going to hold it against her like I did Rebel since her and I hadn't been as close. I told her that I didn't actually want to stay friends but hoped that I didn't have to completely ignore her like I had to do with Rebel. I explained a bit too about why I was hurt before everything that had happened and that everything had added up in that moment. Reacknowledged that I knew I was wrong to have burst at Rebel like I did but the fact that she was willing to throw away 3 years of friendship because I made one mistake was absolutely ridiculous. I had been made out to be the bad guy when I wasn't the only person with bloodied hands. I also expressed interest still in soupy's business and that she would have to tell me if she didn't actually want me to be customer or not so I wouldn't waste either of our time on it. In the end, she just ignored me and never gave me a response. Which quite frankly I think is extremely childish.
I've lost contact with all of my old local fur friends now. It's really been getting me down. I've been depressed since this has happened and I'm tired of it. I'm not the bad guy here. I can't stop thinking that their spreading bad rumors about me and now that both are completely avoiding me it makes it hard to approach mutual friends. I've lost more than just my friend group because of this. Rebel's friendship gave me the strength and confidence to be who I was and to trust in friends. I lost all of that and even the confidence I had earned before that. I had to rekindle the relationship with my best friend (not furry) after this happened because my craze and pain was even effecting her. Thankfully she's not the same person as Rebel and understands that friends can make mistakes and that people can move forward from them. It all just goes to show who your real friends are. I still have a few friends that know everything that happened and have stayed by me or even pursued more of a friendship with me but they broke a large part of me and it's going to take a bit more time to finish healing. Hopefully now that I have this out I don't feel like I need to carry it around anymore and I can be strong for myself and start over. I'm only focusing on a few friendships right now but have made sure that those I care about know it and that things may be a bit different as I work through this all. I like to laugh to myself about mocking Rebel's current friends and being all like: "you better hope you never have to move for work" or what not cause I wouldn't be surprised if she ever does this again. This isn't the first time she's treated a friend like this. I'm not going to stop being me, or making friends, or going to the events I want to go to because of her though. She can't stop me for standing up for myself.
Conclusion
SOOOO moving forward I have to try to learn to retrust my friends. I feel pressured not to make any mistakes. I'm extremely paranoid by no responses and will collapse if it takes a day for someone important to me to respond. Overtime I'll get used to it again and be able to be comfortable with the fact that everyone has a busy life but in the meantime I'm going to be struggling for a bit and be SUPER guarded. I'm sorry to my new friends-in-development. Though you already know this it's really not because of you and your support has been incredible. I'll get there and very much appreciate your want to get to know me.
MKAY I'M DONE I THINK.
First things first: End of Ranked Season 6
If you've been following my blog you know I always struggle around the time that ranked season has ended. Every year I feel a need to be equal of my boyfriend to prove that I am good enough for him or some weird shin-dig like that. This year worked a bit different. I struggled ALL year trying to climb and in the end was never able to. Bubble, being the fantastic boyfriend he is, said he would wait for me so he wouldn't leave me behind like he has in past seasons. I was so thankful for that and relied on it the whole season. Knowing that even though all my friends were growing higher than what they had last year, I wasn't going to be the only one stuck in gold. The issue this year, ended up with the difference that came from me being unable to obtain my original goal. I could tell very early on in the season I wasn't going to make my original goal for the season (Plat 1 and possibly diamond. having finished plat 3 last season it should have been possible). I performed pretty much the exact same as the rest of my friends in their placements but I was the ONLY ONE to get place silver. Again, I did the exact same as others who placed plat with me and I got placed a whole tier lower than them....I was so upset. Thankfully I was able to get gold again right away but the battle to get back to plat proved to be too much. I got stuck in gold 5 for months and months. Eventually I broke out and managed to get to gold 2 but I haven't been able to get farther than that and have found myself stuck in gold 3. The season ends this weekend and it really frustrated me that I performed so poorly. How in the world did I go from plat 3 to gold 3?? I found myself doubting my skills as a player and I was getting really angry and falling into some bad play patterns. I took a break for a bit and didn't even sign on for a whole week. It was actually pretty nice. When I got back on I decided to give it one more go to try to climb. maybe make gold 1 before end of season. While doing so, a good amount of my friends that were on, who did reach diamond this season, kept rooting me on saying that I could still do and they believed in me. That's really when it hit me. I was trying so hard to get the game to prove that I was a good player via the rank it displayed, when those I actually wanted to play with, and enjoyed playing with were acknowledging that I was a good player and despite being stuck down for a season they still believed in me as a player. I was able to accept my rank at that point and while I'm still frustrated with myself for not only not reaching my goal, but placing a whole tier lower than what I did last season, deep down I knew that it didn't really matter and my friends would still be my friends no matter what I placed. Then it hit me. Through all of this bubble had been waiting for me. Sitting 1 win away from being plat all season. I had done what I'd been trying to avoid doing: become a burden. Now I want so desperately for him to get plat. I want to celebrate being plat with him. He would have gotten diamond this season if he hadn't stopped for me because of what happened in past seasons and that kills me inside. Now he may not even get plat. He says he doesn't care and will never leave me behind again but I still worry. We still have a few days so hopefully we can still get it for him :) In the end, for me, this nightmareish season has finally come to an end and I can finally move on and start over. Here's to season 7 and hopefully getting back to plat!
Finances and Work
This became a huge stressor at the end of september. I found out that my financial aid had been taken away from me for school because I had been waived out of a course thus no longer met the credit requirements to receive aid. I had to spend all my savings to pay for my classes because I wasn't prepared to cover the expenses (because I expected fin aid to do it). Not long after I receive an email from my loan service. They got this report from my campus and my status as a student fell below the level necessary to keep my loans on deferment from my undergrad. So not only did I just deplete the entirety of my savings to stay in school, but I also now have to start paying my loans off. Now, I don't work full-time officially. I'm in a graduate assistantship program so I'm only supposed to work half time and be a student the other half time (which creates a full time position). The reality of this though is that I still work full-time but only get paid part-time. I work on average 10 hours over what I'm supposed to each week and I'll never see a cent of compensation. The fact that now the majority of my paychecks each month have to go to the loan service, but that I'm still being overworked hit hard and I got a lot of work stress. I dreaded going to work each day and some days just didn't go because I was sick and tired of being overworked and now super broke. It's funny because some people have questioned me about the fact that I am in queue for AF. "If you're that broke, why'd you get in queue in the first place." "Are you getting your money back because of this?" and honestly I'm super offended people have even related the two. I saved for my AF suit for years. I put the funds in a separate account and didn't touch it. I've signed a contract and will not be getting any of that money back ever. Even if I cancelled the suit I wouldn't ask for the money back. That's never fair to the maker. Also I'm not THAT broke. I know how to manage my finances so I'll be okay I just can't afford to do the same things I used to on my income. Like commission artists, attend conventions, go out to eat, etc. I can only buy necessities (food) and that's it. Well, that's if I want to go to MFF. If I cancel my trip to MFF I can do those things but MFF is more important because I want to catch up with friends who are close to me so I HAVE to closely monitor my spending. As of now I'm on track to afford it but if I slip up and splurge even once that would throw my whole trip off. That kind of pressure is very difficult to handle. I'm sure I'll be okay though! I believe in myself and while I'm walking a fine line, a lot of good things are coming my way in 2017 so I just have to hold out a bit longer. In the meantime, I'm cutting back hours at work to try to even things out. Mostly cause I'm sick of it and secondly because if my boss wants to contest it I can demand extra payment for that work. I've been clocking all my hours the past 3 months so I have that for support of what I've done. ANYWAYS. Enough of that.
The following is why I'm really writing this all out today. As a disclaimer I will be including names in this post but do NOT under any circumstances be rude to any of the people mentioned here. I judge everyone based on how they treat me and NOTHING ELSE. I ask you do the same. Also note I have a really biased opinion of them so obviously this story comes from one side. If you're friends, or wanting to be friends with any of the people involved, please just talk to them about it. You have to be able to be honest and share your feelings with your friends. If you can't do that, can you really be friends with them?? That's the moral of this story so please please PLEASE keep that in mind. I'm also only posting this so I can stop carrying it around with me so that I can move forward. That's what this blog is for so I'm using it for that purpose. If you disagree with any of this I suggest you stop reading here and move on with your life. Anyone who attacks me for this will be instantly blocked but you are welcome to ask questions about it should you feel the need you want to hear more from me on the subject.
Friends
Now a bit of background to my life. My parents have been divorced ever since I was very very little. Thanks to this, I moved around a lot when I was younger with my mom as she re-established her life. This meant changing schools and constantly having to say good-bye to friends. I'm fairly confident during this process I was unable to develop some key friend making social skills as a child thus still struggle making friends. I never had any for the majority of grade school. I was physically abused and bullied all through middle school (each new school I went to there was always someone new there that would hurt me). I've been beat, dragged across the ground by my ponytail, and ganged up on. When I finally ended at a school that I thought I had a friend, I found out that she was using me and dropped me from her life as soon as she could. The first real friend I had wasn't until I was 20 and developed out of a different abuse situation (it was the best friend of a guy who had been...well, anyways, that's not important). Thankfully to this day we still stay in touch. Because of my past I have developed a really weird friend complex. The easiest way to explain it is the relationships I hold with people are as follows: my friends are as close to me as society would consider a best friend. My best friends are those people who are even greater than that. Those best friends you see and you know without a doubt they're inseparable and will be friends for a long time. To this day I have 1 best friend and 2 friends. This does not include a few people who I'm developing friendships with and society would consider us friends but by my weird standards we're not quite there yet. I don't really need more than what I have but I try not to turn down anyone in the chance that I may get another friend. After I made the three friends listed above I started to transition out of college and into adult life. I was confident and eager to meet many people. It was at this time I met Rebel. Her and I did a ton of things together within the furry fandom. We'd constantly carpool and attend events together and everyone around us could see we were growing to be close friends. Now as I'm developing relationships with friends I make sure to let them know about my past and weird friend standards so they know how much they mean to me. I was realizing how close Rebel and I were growing and told her how I considered her to be one of my best friends. She accepted at the time and with her at my side I felt I could do anything and started meeting and befriending more people than ever. That was three years ago and sadly the happiness didn't last long. The spark for it all was when I graduated and had to move away for work. We stayed in pretty good contact for the first year or so and it was easy and enjoyable to see her when I was in town. We'd mutually invite each other to events and enjoy talking the days away.
I'm not quite sure how to explain the transition from that to what has happened, but of course our lives went on, and as they did I noticed more and more of our group chats would die. She was spending more time with other people and telling me more of how busy she was and didn't have time to talk. I've known for a long time that Rebel doesn't like texting/using chat services so I always respected that. I never measured relationships on the amount of time spent talking online anyways. Anyone who was my friend at any point knows this about me. I started to feel like I was getting pushed out of her life. A few things happened that really started to concern me. As I continued to support her work as an artist and as a friend she was ignoring that more and more. I'd come and visit her in streams and see her actively communicating with the rest of her (our) friends and when I'd jokingly question why I wasn't involved she'd change the subject. When we were getting rooms for FM and MFF, which we had previously talked about and given our word we'd share together at the previous cons, she quickly chose not to room with me and go with other people. I stepped up for myself and I still didn't get to room with her. She found enough excuses as to why it didn't make sense and I didn't want to argue/make her upset so I just let it go. Please note, that around this point, I can tell I'm being pushed out of her life and it's terrifying me. I'd never lost a best friend like this and wanted to do anything to get her back. I started feeling like I needed to buy back her friendship. Spending money on gifts I know she'd love because they'd match the things that her new best friend had. Let me tell you how great it feels to see a friend be more excited to the person she now matches about her gift than the one who gave it to her. I felt like a burden. Even in person I was started to get left behind and she wasn't really listening to things I was saying. She didn't show that she cared about any good news and didn't seem to care that I was excited for her good news. I messaged her on facebook asking if everything was okay between us. Said I was worried I had done something wrong and sorry if I offended her. She said I had done nothing and nothing was wrong. I was still worried but wanted to trust her that we were okay. I started getting ignored after that.
She wasn't responding to my messages and I was afraid to text her since she didn't like text. I couldn't call her cause she kept telling me how busy she was so I didn't want to take up any of her precious time since she apparently didn't have that much. During all this time she kept communicating and growing closer with other friends that were still local. It was like a double standard! I could tell I was being pushed out but couldn't do anything about it cause I wanted to respect what she had told me.
This past summer, a time had come that I was going to visit home. I wanted so desperately to meet with her and talk everything out in person, just the two of us. I debated for a long time about how to contact her. She wasn't even looking at my facebook messages anymore so I knew I couldn't contact her that way and she'd removed me from her social groups on other texting platforms so I didn't feel comfortable talking to her that way either. The way she'd been responding to me last time I saw her in person made me think she didn't even want to be around me anymore so I couldn't bring myself the courage to talk to her. I'd messaged Soupy, her new best friend, and she thankfully agreed to give me some time when I was in town but wasn't sure when that would be. I just asked that she let me know and that I'd be super flexible to her busy schedule. I had made plans with a couple other local friends to hang out as well. I had posted a status to facebook about me returning home and Rebel had liked it so I figured she thus knew I was going to be in town. That's when everything turned bad.
While in town, on a thursday I finally got the courage to message Rebel on facebook during a time she was being active on facebook so I figured she'd have time. She never actually opened the message so whether or not she actually saw it was up in the air but previous messages I had sent to her on facebook were also still unread (EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE RESPONSES TO A QUESTION SHE HAD ASKED ME!!). My assumption is she saw the message blurb pop up, saw what it said and just pushed it aside, never really opening it. It's not saturday, my trip is set to end early the following week. I'd met with all my friends except soupy and rebel, neither of whom had gotten back to me. I saw soupy make a post on facebook implying that she needed to do some shopping so was going to go out to the MOA for the day. I didn't say anything to her, even though I was pretty offended she didn't invite me along even though she said she would give me some time and I had previously suggested we meet up at a mall for food or something. Instead of being mad at her I decided to text Rebel finally to see if I'd actually get a response. Two hours later she's posting pictures of herself out at the mall with Soupy enjoying the day away. That was the last straw. I was too hurt. She had time to go hang out at the mall but no time to read messages from someone who she had last called a best friend.
I called her out on it, below is our conversation:
Saturday
1:31pm Me: "You know what, don't respond. I don't care anymore. I was going to invite you out so we could talk about whatever happened between us in hopes we could fix our friendship but clearly you want nothing to do with me. I don't even know what I did wrong. I'm sorry I mistreated you so bad you feel the need to avoid me and I hope your new friends work better for you. Bye."
2:05pm Rebel: "Alrighty. I was at the mall and my phone was in airplane mode to save battery."
2:13pm Me: "I messaged you Thursday. You also knew I was going to be in town."
2:15pm Rebel: "Where'd you message me? And you never mentioned being in town"
2:18pm Me: "I didn't mention it to you personally because I assumed you didn't want to see me. But you had liked the status I posted about me being in town :/ I messaged you on facebook when you were on. I figured when you were out posting on it using your phone you would have at least seen my message. So I guess I'm sorry if I misundertood that."
2:22pm Rebel: "I guess I didn't know there was anything wrong? I didn't realize you were upset because I didn't see anything wrong"
2:23pm Me: "Which is why I wanted to invite you out to talk. To me you feel near impossible to get a hold of these days so I assumed I had done something to make you so mad you didn't want to be friends anymore."
2:35pm Me: "Listen, I really don't want to lose you. But is things aren't going to work out for us I'd rather them end on positive terms. I'm going to be at suit up saturday tonight. If you're there we can talk and if not I still wouldn't mind talking in person. I'll be in town until mid/late next week."
Sunday
9:32am Me: "Well whenever you get a chance let me know. Just texting to let you know that a few people asked about how you were doin last night, thought you might like to know."
Tuesday
10:16am Me: "Today is the last day I have here. If you would at least tell me you don't want to talk I'd appreciate it. If you continue not to respond I'll just assume you really don't want to be friends and leave you alone forever. If that ends up being the case I guess thanks for the fun times we did have, sorry I seemed to have hurt you so much you felt the need to avoid me completely, and good luck in your future.
6:16pm Rebel: "I'm not really sure what I did other than nothing. You live four hours away, I have friends that live further away that I haven't spoken to in just as long that haven't suddenly decided that I hate them because they understand that we're busy."
6:50pm Me: "I know it feels sudden to you but there is more to it, I promise I'm not completely delusional. I also count you as one of my best friends and I think I've told you what that means to me. If not, I'm sorry. I know I live far away and don't expect the kind of relationship we're able to have when we're close but we haven't really had much if any relationship since I had to move. I know very well I haven't done as much as I'd like to try and stay close with you but I've felt like you haven't tried at all (which is just how I've felt to a point and could be wrong and I may have missed everything you've done, which is why I've wanted to talk) this kind of thing is hard to talk about over text."
"So what are we going to do? What do you want?"
9:00pm Me: "How do I make you the happiest?"
10:04pm Rebel: "I don't have the time or energy to go out of my way to be friends with someone who expects me to read minds instead of just talking and communicating what you want. If you wanted to stay friends just talk once in a while. Don't blow up at me for not living up to your expectations that I have no idea about. I don't text, in general, I don't really talk in general. We didn't text much when you lived here, in my mind nothing has changed yet I'm being scrutinized for not knowing what you wanted."
10:16pm Me: "I did apologize for that, it was harsh because I let my feelings get the best of me, again I'm sorry for that. and it's not about not texting and not talking. That means nothing. You never gave me a chance to explain that, or anything. I know you don't like messaging or texting which is why I wanted to talk in person."
10:22pm Me: "I promised myself I'd respect your decision though. I'll leave you be."
That's the last we've spoken. I've lived up to what I said and not approached her or said anything. I was SUPER nervous about going to FM because I would see her in person. Also, after this all happened I immediately apologized to soupy saying that I hope whatever happens between Rebel and I doesn't hurt her too much and was sorry for the trouble it would cause her. I had gotten no response from her and had no idea how she had taken everything. When I got to FM the first thing I noticed is that Rebel was doing everything in her power to avoid me. She would leave the room if she was available when I was in the same room and on multiple occasions drastically changed the path in which she was walking to avoid having to pass me. I felt it was a bit extreme seeing as I told her I'd respect her decision and leave her be but I figured she wasn't really listening to me still so she felt the need to avoid me still. At one point I did approach soupy though and asked for a hug. She obliged and I thanked her and didn't say anything more. Later in the con I felt bad cause I didn't want my presence to ruin Rebel's con so I approached soupy again and told her Rebel didn't have to worry so much and that I would leave her alone like I said. Things seemed like they would be good enough between us. After the con I got back and thanked her. The fact that she didn't hate me gave me hope that I could move forward and that not all was lost because of what happened between Rebel and I. Soupy told me that what I had done did hurt her and she wasn't the most comfortable being around me. I understood and told her that if she really wanted I'd leave her be just as I did Rebel but that she at least give me a chance to share my side of the story before she made her judgement. A couple days later I realized how stupid that was. Why in the world should I have to defend myself to Soupy when she pushed me aside and went back on her word. I told her I appreciated that she gave me a chance but I didn't want it. Called her out on the fact that she too had hurt me but that I wasn't going to hold it against her like I did Rebel since her and I hadn't been as close. I told her that I didn't actually want to stay friends but hoped that I didn't have to completely ignore her like I had to do with Rebel. I explained a bit too about why I was hurt before everything that had happened and that everything had added up in that moment. Reacknowledged that I knew I was wrong to have burst at Rebel like I did but the fact that she was willing to throw away 3 years of friendship because I made one mistake was absolutely ridiculous. I had been made out to be the bad guy when I wasn't the only person with bloodied hands. I also expressed interest still in soupy's business and that she would have to tell me if she didn't actually want me to be customer or not so I wouldn't waste either of our time on it. In the end, she just ignored me and never gave me a response. Which quite frankly I think is extremely childish.
I've lost contact with all of my old local fur friends now. It's really been getting me down. I've been depressed since this has happened and I'm tired of it. I'm not the bad guy here. I can't stop thinking that their spreading bad rumors about me and now that both are completely avoiding me it makes it hard to approach mutual friends. I've lost more than just my friend group because of this. Rebel's friendship gave me the strength and confidence to be who I was and to trust in friends. I lost all of that and even the confidence I had earned before that. I had to rekindle the relationship with my best friend (not furry) after this happened because my craze and pain was even effecting her. Thankfully she's not the same person as Rebel and understands that friends can make mistakes and that people can move forward from them. It all just goes to show who your real friends are. I still have a few friends that know everything that happened and have stayed by me or even pursued more of a friendship with me but they broke a large part of me and it's going to take a bit more time to finish healing. Hopefully now that I have this out I don't feel like I need to carry it around anymore and I can be strong for myself and start over. I'm only focusing on a few friendships right now but have made sure that those I care about know it and that things may be a bit different as I work through this all. I like to laugh to myself about mocking Rebel's current friends and being all like: "you better hope you never have to move for work" or what not cause I wouldn't be surprised if she ever does this again. This isn't the first time she's treated a friend like this. I'm not going to stop being me, or making friends, or going to the events I want to go to because of her though. She can't stop me for standing up for myself.
Conclusion
SOOOO moving forward I have to try to learn to retrust my friends. I feel pressured not to make any mistakes. I'm extremely paranoid by no responses and will collapse if it takes a day for someone important to me to respond. Overtime I'll get used to it again and be able to be comfortable with the fact that everyone has a busy life but in the meantime I'm going to be struggling for a bit and be SUPER guarded. I'm sorry to my new friends-in-development. Though you already know this it's really not because of you and your support has been incredible. I'll get there and very much appreciate your want to get to know me.
MKAY I'M DONE I THINK.