long weekend

man, no one loves holidays more than me.

no one hates holidays more than me, either.

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one of the greatest things about living by yourself is that you're not answerable to anyone. you get to do what you want to, when you want to. i just had melted chocolate for dinner and that was OK, because i make the rules.

the worst thing about living alone though is that there's no one to take care of you. you're on your own here. if you make a mess, it's up to you to clean it up. sick and tired and need to eat? you gotta get up and cook. some days, you don't have anyone to talk to, either.

that's what this one's about.

my sister and flatmate are currently in Canberra. i was going to go too, but i have work that i wanted to get done. also, i just really like being alone. 

i've had the apartment to myself since Friday, which is pretty fucking sick. i don't have to talk to anyone if i don't want to, can blast music at full volume whenever, have the kitchen all to myself, and am just generally unbothered for a bit.

but as i've mentioned before, holidays are often difficult for me because my loneliness comes out more than i'd like. i've gotten about 2 hours of work done over the past 3 days, which is 2 hours more than i would normally do, but significantly less than i was expecting. i'm 70% sure this is because depression, but this is still awful considering we're almost halfway through the term.

i've been blasting falling down by lil peep and xxxtentacion and just sitting in my own sadness.

OK, that's a lot of unnecessary information. here's what's bothering me - i don't think my friends are my friends anymore.

this is something i was actually ranting about in my private story last night, and the responses have generally been, "you can come to me anytime!" i love you, my friend, but you have quite literally missed the point. it isn't that i don't know i can come to you; you are an angel sent from above, but it is more about not being considered anymore.

i broke off a whole friendship over this. it's that deep.

for once in my life, i'd like to be a priority. i'd like to be chosen. i know SO many people, which is where so much of my stress stems from, but it's genuinely such a blessing and curse at the same time. people are always quick to point out how many people i have in my life. they just miss the part where i'm no one's first choice.

my mum would go to her husband first, which is so incredibly fair.

my sister would go to her friends first, again, incredibly fair.

my friends who have partners - they'd go to their partners first. completely understandable.

or if they're single, then they'd go to other friends first. OK, makes sense!

but what about me?

these people make up my entire world. some of them are my first choices. the fact that sometimes i'm not even a thought, let alone the first or second, is a very confronting feeling. it just reaffirms that core belief i have that i am just not likeable enough. that everything i've believed about myself so far has been a complete lie.

most days, i'm able to make my peace with this. i'm OK with not being the one that gets picked. i don't feel special, but i don't have to be special.

but i don't think it's fair how unequal these relationships are. why am i ALWAYS the one that's doing more for others, and never the one that's being treated that way? why am i always the giver, always being taken from? when am i going to meet people who are going to consider me without me asking to be considered? when am i going to meet people who are going to put ME first?

my family puts me first, so i really don't have any complaints there. that's a completely different type of relationship and drawing comparisons there is not fair at all.

but with every other relationship i have, man, i wish people would sometimes do for me what i would for them. it's really not fair lol.

the point isn't that i don't know i can't talk to you. i know i can. i just hate that if the tables were turned, i wouldn't be the first person you'd come to. i exist only when it's convenient for other people. i disappear when i've served my purpose.

the point isn't that i can't reach out to you. i just wish i didn't have to. i just wish that for once, you'd reach out and check in with me, instead of me constantly having to make that effort. call me high-maintenance or someone with unrealistic expectations, but i know it can be done because i keep doing it. i just want to meet people like me.

i broke off my friendship over this, not because i didn't care about that person anymore, but because they genuinely didn't care about me.

OK, that's a bit unfair when i phrase it like that. what i mean is that i wasn't a priority anymore; i know they didn't have ill intentions, but i was constantly feeling unwanted around them. but they kept insisting that that wasn't the case and all was well. i had come to expect a level of effort from them, and it felt like everything that we had built up until that point had just... disappeared? i felt like i was being treated differently compared to literally everyone else. they kept telling me that they were busy, but people make time for what they want to make time for. maybe what they meant was that they were just too busy for me. :)

and that's OK. relationships change and you outgrow people. i just wish people would be more honest about this instead of pretending otherwise.

and my feelings were finally acknowledged when it was too late, because up until that point, all i heard were excuses and explanations. it's easy to say you care. it's difficult to actually show that. i wish people's words matched their actions. i wish they did more when it mattered, not when things couldn't be fixed anymore.

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so that's where the loneliness comes from. things like this make me feel like distancing myself from everyone else is the best course of action, so that is what i do. it's not fair that i'm constantly doing more for you than you would ever do for me.

i think this is just the result of the path i've chosen for myself. it is not lost on me that my brain works differently compared to other people, and i react differently to the same situations. i glorify the grindset, which i really shouldn't, but inevitably push people away and then complain when they don't care for me the way i wish they would.

perhaps there is more to be said on this, but i got distracted because i had to work on a spreadsheet and now i've forgotten all the other points i wanted to make, so i'm going to end this here.

TLDR - i want to meet friends, but friends who are givers and go above and beyond just like i would for them.

PS. my pictures have nothing to do with what i've written. i just wanted to share stuff from Canberra. :)