Happy July, everyone!

I know I say that like it’s the first of July and it’s actually the twelfth, but the month of July has been a blur and I haven’t quite gotten caught up yet. I was diagnosed with COVID-19 on July 1^st and since then, I have done nothing but lay in bed, binge watch Grey’s Anatomy, eat trashy food, and sleep. I know it sounds like a luxurious vacation, but it’s only fun when your body doesn’t feel like your muscles were replaced with lead and you can actually taste the trashy food you’re eating.

I know I’m kind of making light of this, but in all seriousness, this virus is no joke. I’m on day twelve of being in bed and I’m just NOW starting to feel the slightest bit human again. I’m still coughing, I’m still tired, and I can’t smell or taste anything. These are mild symptoms – it was a lot worse. I had a fever for about five days, I had hallucinations, my body was in severe pain, I stopped being able to eat without getting sick, and the fatigue is so intense.

Anyway, I didn’t start this blog to talk about my illness. I just felt like because I made light of it, I should also let you know that it is VERY serious and not to be taken lightly. I got lucky and didn’t end up in the hospital, but it can be a lot worse than it has been for me. I hope you’re all doing what you can to protect yourself! I wouldn’t wish this sickness on anyone.

Moving on….

I do have SO MANY THINGS I need to blog about. Some of you may have seen my post and if you did, yes, I am going to go into further detail of all of those things, I promise. But, that won’t be today. It would appear that something ELSE has come up. Yes, more crap on top of everything else I’m dealing with. I’ve been thinking about it for days – since it happened. Every time I think about it, I get this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and my blood starts to run cold because of the self-hatred laced in my veins. That being said, I promise this blog isn’t going to be a pity-party. I just… I can’t let myself dwell on this anymore. It’s eating me up and if I don’t process it and get it out, I know that this is something that will pull me back down into darkness and I can’t have that right now. I don’t want that. Even with everything I have going on right now, I’ve stayed above the water. I’ve been okay. I can’t let THIS be the reason I fall. I cannot let this person have that much control over me.

Now… I’m not sure if I want to get into the whole story of what sparked the conversation that has plagued me with self-hatred. It was stupid, honestly. Truthfully, that part isn’t what I’m upset about. I’m upset about the things that were said to me because of a situation that I didn’t think warranted an argument. I didn’t even know anything was wrong. I didn’t realize that I was wrong.

Alright, I’m just going to be really transparent here. I’m just going to lay it all out there. This blog has shared a lot of personal things about me… I guess it wouldn’t hurt to share this too.

I have a friend – well, I guess I have an EX-friend – that is very opinionated and strong-willed. That’s not a bad thing – not at all! It just so happens that I am the complete opposite. Anyone that knows me in my personal life knows that I am religious. I’ve tried to keep that out of my blogs because I don’t like it when people judge or decide they don’t like me because they don’t have the same views as me. I am not pushy with religion nor do I dislike people that don’t have the same beliefs as me. It’s not something I use to define my relationships. Religion is a personal choice.

This ex-friend of mine was not religious, but I didn’t care. It didn’t bother me. We just kept religion out of conversations and everything was fine. Well, I say everything was fine. We fought a lot, but never about religion. Anyway, like I said, she was always really vocal about her stances on things. Even if I didn’t agree, I never said anything. It wasn’t worth fighting about.

I am a huge fan of Chick-fil-A. It’s hands-down one of my favorite places to eat! I had been snapchatting with this ex-friend one day and she referred to Chick-fil-A as “homophobic Jesus chicken.” I really didn’t care for that. Not because it was Chick-fil-A necessarily, but because the way she was talking about it was like referring to God in a derogatory sense. I don’t push religion on people, so I really don’t like it when people that KNOW I’m religious, trash God or refer to Him negatively around me. But, even though I didn’t like it, I didn’t say anything. I just bit my tongue and moved on.

About a week ago, we were having a conversation about salad. That’s right – SALAD. I made a comment about Chick-fil-A having the best salads. She responded with a picture of her salad and where she got it from and said it was “non-homophobic.” Now, let me also say that I am NOT a homophobe. Not even a little bit. I’m not “out” or anything, but I’ve always liked women more than men. I don’t broadcast it, but I am not homophobic at all. Even still, I didn’t like the comment. So, I responded by saying “you don’t have to call it non-homophobic J” and she said that Chick-fil-A had recently donated a lot of money to anti-LGBTQ communities. So, for the first time, I kind of stood up for myself and voiced my own opinion. I said that there were restaurants that supported things that I didn’t agree with, but I still ate there and I didn’t bash them or slander them because of that. And she said, “it’s not slander if it’s true.” After that, I simply didn’t respond. It didn’t feel like an argument to me, I just didn’t know what to say and I didn’t WANT to fight. It didn’t seem worth it.

All of this happened while I was still battling COVID. A couple of hours after that conversation, I spiked a high fever and I started having weird hallucinations. I was in a lot of pain, I was crying, and I really didn’t feel well. She sent me another snap and I didn’t respond because of how I was feeling. She knew I was sick. I didn’t think anything of it.

The next day, I got up and saw that she deleted me off of her Snapchat. I was confused so I sent her a text and I asked why she deleted me. She said she thought it was best if we weren’t friends anymore. I asked if I did something wrong… and this is where it got bad.

I have this fear… a fear that when people get to know me or I ask for help too many times, that I exhaust them. I am afraid that people get tired of me. Even when they say they want to be there or even when I’m there for them as often as I can be or as often as they allow me to be, I still fear that I am “too much.” I don’t mean to be that way. It’s embarrassing and I hate that part of me. I mean, it’s one of the things that makes me wish I didn’t exist. I HATE that aspect of myself.

So, after she told me that she didn’t want to be friends anymore, I said, “did I do something wrong?” to which she responded, “I get exhausted. And that question is exactly why,” and immediately, I was hurt. My face flushed, my body was hot, and I started to panic. I didn’t realize I was doing that and she was feeling that way about me. I wish she would’ve just stepped back when I was being “too much.” She had done it before. I just thought that relationship was safe and she understood me and I was wrong.

I proceeded to tell her that I was sorry for doing that and that I didn’t realize it had gotten to that point. I also told her that I was very confused – I didn’t know WHAT happened to make all of this come out. I had been totally mundane that week because I was sick. Even while I had COVID, I stayed on the phone with her for nearly TWO HOURS one night because she wanted the company. I told her several times that I was tired and didn’t feel well, but she didn’t seem to want to say goodbye. So, I stayed on the phone. But for some reason, I was exhausting HER. I just didn’t understand.

She proceeded to tell me that I was making her feel disrespected and I didn’t understand why she was feeling that way, and then “hijacking it” so that she feels sorry for me. She said she was walking on eggshells and worried that what she said would lead to me self-harming. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I wasn’t MAD about it… but I was so unbelievably hurt. Someone I trusted and confided in and considered to be one of my closest friends, was confirming all of my worst fears. She was confirming all of the worst things I felt about myself.

If she was feeling disrespected, why not just talk to me? Nothing I did or said was intended to be offensive. Anyone that knows me, knows that I don’t have a mean bone in my body. It’s just not how I am – never have been that way. I would never intentionally disrespect or hurt someone I cared for that way. She also said she was mad that I didn’t understand why she was feeling disrespected. How can you hold that against someone? How can you be upset with someone for NOT KNOWING they had done something wrong? If I knew what I had done, I could’ve fixed it. It could’ve been a simple misunderstanding. Honestly, I’m assuming it WAS a misunderstanding considering that I didn’t even know she was upset. I never knew anything was wrong.

The next part was probably one of the most hurtful things she said. None of this felt like it was coming from this one isolated incident… these were obviously things that had been building up and she had been thinking for a while. She said that I was “hijacking it” so she would feel sorry for me. Is that really what she thinks of me? That I manipulate people into feeling bad for me? I don’t even really know what else to say about this part aside from the fact that I’m very hurt. I didn’t realize that she thought such a horrible thing about me. I thought we were friends. Not just friends, I thought we were CLOSE friends. I didn’t realize she secretly hated me.

That last bit about fearing that confrontation would make me self-harm… I don’t understand that. Not only am I six days away from being an entire month clean, I haven’t spoken to her about self-harm in a very, very long time. I mean, I haven’t talked to her about it in MONTHS. And the last time I self-harmed? I was days away from being a month clean. She made it out to sound like every time she upsets me, I cut myself and tell her it was her fault. That’s just not true. I’ve been doing SO good with my self-harm and it’s frankly none of her business. Had I been talking to her about it, it would be her business, but I hadn’t said anything to her about it in such a long time. And I have NEVER cut because of her. Ever. It’s never been because she upset me. So really, I don’t know where that even came from. She was using my personal information against me and she was using it all wrong. SHE was wrong.

After that, she proceeded to say that she wasn’t trying to be mean, but she was just being “straightforward” with me. No. That’s crap. I have another friend that is VERY straightforward with me. She always tells it to me like it is. She doesn’t tell me what I want to hear. Sometimes we argue, yes, but I know where she’s coming from and she’s never hurtful to me. What this ex-friend did, was just mean. It was SO hurtful. There are so many other ways she could’ve gone about this. It wasn’t a heated argument – I was prepared to act like adults and just have a conversation – but she had already made up her mind that I was a horrible human being and she wanted nothing more to do with me.

I asked if all of this was because I didn’t respond the night before. I explained what happened and why I didn’t respond. She said it was about the homophobia. I told her that I just didn’t know how to respond to her and, again, told her I was ill. It actually wasn’t until just now when I was reading through those messages that I think I realized what she meant. I think she thought because of what I said about Chick-fil-A, because I stood up for them, that I am homophobic. Although, if she thinks that of me, she doesn’t know me at all. My best friend is in a same sex relationship. I have plenty of friends that don’t identify as straight. I’m not even sure I’M straight, and she knows that. So, I don’t see how she could think I was homophobic. If that IS what she thought, I don’t know why she didn’t just talk to me about it. I could’ve explained what I meant or how I felt. I guess she just didn’t care about our friendship the way I did. I don’t know.

That was basically the end of the conversation. It didn’t matter what else I said, she was done. I wasn’t in the mood to argue, so I dropped it. I guess I’m just… hurt. It’s taken me a while to be able to even write this blog. I had to set it down because reliving that conversation broke me. Not because she was mean, but because I could just hear the things she said about me running through my head and I felt like they were true. That I was this awful person and EVERYONE secretly hated me and felt these things about me. I try so hard to be a light and a confidant and to be supportive of others. I don’t want people to think I’m this low-life, manipulative, attention-seeker that claims self-harm when I don’t get my way. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I try to be. I just can’t stand the thought that there are people out there that feel this way about me.

I am upset that I lost a good friend, but I’m more upset about what was said. I can’t get it out of my head. My hope is that by writing about it, I can start to move on. To be honest, I put it aside until I was ready to deal with it. I was so sick – I didn’t have the energy to think about it or process it – but now, I’m starting to feel better, and I HAD to process it. It just kept coming up in the back of my mind and I don’t want to be hurt over this anymore.

Because I have COVID, I had to cancel three weeks of therapy. That’s right – THREE sessions. I don’t get to see my T again until the 23^rd of July. I want to talk about this with her, but I have to wait. Until then, this is how I’m processing. I just needed to write it out.

I wouldn’t say that I ‘feel better’, but I do feel like I finally had the chance to say my piece and now I can start to move on. I just hope that this is something I can come to terms with and maybe I can work through the thoughts in therapy and learn that I’m worth more than this. Maybe I can learn that it’s possible that I’m still worth loving and I’m not this terrible person that she made me out to be. Maybe.

Anyway, thank you for giving me a safe space to talk about this and release what I’ve been holding on to. I’m hoping that soon I will feel safe enough to really come back to AS, now just isn’t the time. But, hopefully soon. I miss this community a lot.

Thanks for reading and being a part of my life! I’ll see you all soon.

XO,
Poppy