things i still think about

# This was originally titled music is the medicine after the album by BLESSED.

// absofuckinglutely obsessed with this album by BLESSED. every song on this is genius, both lyrically and musically. i've never been this glad to have discovered an artist.

i dropped a friend yesterday. it was a sudden thing, and perhaps it could have been saved.

please treat my description of the situation with hostility, because i do not trust myself to be a reliable narrator and i am convinced that i am painting the situation in a way that makes me look like the victim, when in reality, that might not be the case.

this friend and i have been very close for quite a while. i've known them for almost half a year, i think, and we've spent a lot of time together. they know a lot of things about me, more than i should've shared, but i trusted them and didn't think too much about it.

i am coming out of a period of time when i was engaging in self-harm, and tried to kill myself, and so i have a lot of things on my mind right now, including my coursework (which is my biggest priority). because of this, i have been quite distant and perhaps not as involved as i used to be. i may have been avoiding them, because sometimes i just need my space and i wanted to be around other people for a little while.

so i haven't really seen them as much these last couple of weeks. i've tried to maintain a certain level of communication over text, but i get busy and i have my phases when i just disappear. my mood swings don't help, but they are what they are. it's a shitty thing to do to people that you care about, but you gotta look out for yourself, first and foremost. constant communication is not something i can do.

here's the tldr version of what happened. they started by asking if there was something i wanted to say to them. this text was sent to me a few minutes after the first couple of texts they had sent. my replies were super slow; i was working on something and i was with other people, and i didn't want to half-arse my conversation. i was a little confused by this question, but they started being passive aggressive when i asked them, and then told them that i didn't want to speak to them for a bit.

ensues a 2 hour conversation about how i've been mean and distant. i agree, i have been distant. mean, i'm not very sure about. i try and explain my behaviour, since it is not consistent with how i usually act, and i thought that that's what was irking them. they never explicitly told me what the actual issue was, and so throughout the conversation, i was just shooting my shot in the dark, hoping one of them would land.

i was trying to work on an assignment that's due tomorrow. i am quite behind on my work at the moment because of my mental health, and i've been trying to catch up on everything, especially with my exams being right around the corner. i tell them that i don't want to deal with this right now, and that i'd like a break and some space. they say okay, but then they bring up the argument again.

i repeat myself, quite a few times. they ask to call, i say no. they call me regardless.

they don't drop the topic. i mentioned to them that i'd like to take a step back and reassess my relationship so i could do what's best for me, because the conversation felt a lot like they were constantly trying to blame me for everything without being understanding of why i was being the way that i was, or even considering my life. at that point, i had had enough, and i told them that even though it makes me a massive hypocrite, i would like to be acquaintances. our friendship could get fucked.

they keep asking me why, and this is where they drop bombs about how they feel about me.

"You do this with everyone. Everyone else is always the problem and you go "how dare they"

I've done nothing to you"

"You're being really unfair to me"

"You just have to win. If I dare question that you're being hurtful, I just get cut out"

and then they do something i didn't think anyone would ever do to me.

"You absolutely owe me a reason. If <person that i have written extensively about> just up and left you would be mad you didn't have a reason

Oh wait. That did happen"

i had confided in them because i trusted them. everything i've told them thus far, i told them that stuff in confidence because i thought i could share it with them. when push came to shove, they decided that they should use it against me so that they could get to me, so that they could hurt me.

and then they have the audacity to say that they don't want to lose me as a friend.

you used some of my lowest moments against me as ammunition. call me names, say that i'm evil and selfish, that's fine. but you knew how much it would hurt me, yet you went ahead with that. then you say that we're friends. you knew what you were doing. just a little surprised that you'd stoop to that level.

and if this person and i had not fixed things between us, this would've crushed me. but then you say that you don't mean to attack me. that you care about me.

you showed me all your colours, all at once. you told me exactly what you thought of me and how you felt about me. you made me feel scared, and anxious. you tried to emotionally manipulate me in a last-ditch effort to convince me to change my mind. you didn't respect my boundaries, or consider things from my point of view at all.

you broke my trust. how does one come back from that?

you made me doubt my conscience. how do i forgive you for that?

and for a second, even if i forgot about all of that - you led me to believe that i am a pretentious hypocrite, and that i don't actually care about anyone at all. in one moment, you undid all of the work that i've done to get rid of my negative self-talk, and made me fall back into a version of me that never wanted to be alive in the first place.

there's no saving this anymore.

-

i do wonder if there's any truth to what they said. if they're saying that - and please remember that this person and i used to be super close - surely all of that must be true. at least some parts of it.

i don't know how to accept responsibility and blame other people for my problems.

i only care about winning, and don't care who i have to hurt in order to get what i want.

i am selfish, and i change the rules of the game to favour myself.

most importantly, i am a shitty person.

Something To Believe In by BLESSED, from the album Music Is The Medicine