Things I am learning

Thinking a lot about how I interact with people these days (yes, more navel-gazing dear reader [omphaloskepsis? was that the word?], but it's my blog and I can cry if I want to). Largely because interacting with people just seems painful to me right now. I have finally gone back into therapy with a promising Hakomi practitioner, so I can spare you too much emotional out-pouring, but I feel like writing something out and I might as well put it on my blog.

Here are the things I've learned about myself and interacting with people in the last year:

- It is very difficult to let people you care about distance themselves when they clearly need to.

- It is very difficult to become estranged from a friend.

- There is a big difference between understanding my relationships intellectually and understanding them emotionally.

- Not only is it hard to lose a friend, it is hard to lose all the friends that came with them.

- Not only is it hard to lose a friend, it is hard to be fair to mutual friends (emotionally speaking) who still like both of you.

- It is hard to watch your former social circle whirl merrily on without you, even when everyone recognizes (even me) that it's reasonable and appropriate for me not to be in it.

- It is hard to relate to people in any good way when you can't get through a conversation without feeling hurt.

- It's really easy to distance yourself from all your close friends and leave yourself feeling lonely and isolated.

- it's really hard to pick yourself back up and get out there when you've left yourself lonely and isolated.

- I'm really super good at making myself miserable.

- There is nothing more constant about friendships and people than that they are always changing.

- it seems wise to me to learn to adapt to the every-changing closeness/distance with my friends without letting it cause me suffering but I don't know where to begin.

- I'm a little bit of a drama factory right now.

- I have a hard time managing a social life emotionally. I largely attribute this to lack of practice.

- I someday hope to deal with all of this much better than I do now.