Emotions 1001

I suck at friendship. I'm not saying that to be self-deprecating, or to garner sympathy, it's just that when I look at myself, I realize that my inability throughout most of my life to make and maintain close friendships is more likely my own fault than the fault of the people who I have tried to be friends with.

I've been doing a lot of self-reflection lately, due to the fact that it is the only way I know how to deal with  pain, and the thing that keeps coming up for me is the fact that I don't know how to be emotionally close to someone. I don't tell people things about myself. I mean, I can talk about myself in conversation at length, but then I rarely say anything real; anything important. And it's not that I don't want to; it's not that there aren't people in my life who I think have earned the right to know things about who I am and what makes me up, who I want to tell those things I don't tell anyone, but I can't. As soon as those things come up, as soon as someone wants to know how I'm really feeling, I shut down. My mind goes blank, and the words disappear, and I just can't bring myself to do it. To say it out loud. This is one of the main reasons I stayed in the closet for nearly two years after I realized that I'm gay. It wasn't that I feared the rejection of my friends and family, it was that I didn't know how to tell them something so personal.

It hasn't been until the last year that I've felt like I actually have people in my life who qualify as close friends, people who I really trust and am completely comfortable with. And yet, now, when I really could use some emotional support, I don't know how to ask for it. I mean [Keeper of All Knowledge] explicitly offered to talk, but I haven't taken her up on it, because...I don't know. Because I don't know how to reach out to people; because I'm too proud to admit when I need help; because I'm too scared of how I feel to admit it anyone else; because I've spent the past three months watching the shit storm that is [Type A, Likes Baseball] and [Captain America] happen and I don't want to be anything like them; because, because, because...And I know I should talk to [Keeper of All Knowledge], really, because it would help to talk to someone impartial, and if anyone can give emotional support it's her, and because I haven't even told her what happened with [Львица], and after how great my friends have been I at least owe them that.

Cats to the rescue! They make everything better.

And then there's [Львица]. I'm closer to her than just about anyone, and she's the closest I've ever come to having a best friend. Even before we were dating, she knew more about me than anyone else, and even though she doesn't believe it, I tell her things I don't tell other people, or at least I try to, which is a lot for me, because with most people I don't even try. And yet, even with her, even with how much I want to tell her about who I am, as soon as she asks me to tell her something, my friendly neighborhood mental block is back, and the words are gone. It's not that I had nothing to say to you, it's that as soon as you asked, I literally couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't about boats, dinosaurs, or science.

But regardless, I'd like to think that we're pretty close at this point, after everything, and right now I'm terrified that I'm going to lose that. Not because of her, or anything that she's done, but because I am an emotional idiot. Because I don't know how to feel this way, nor do I really understand how I'm feeling, and I don't know how to recover, how to start feeling better. (I know that that's all stupid because emotions are inherently irrational, but I still want to have a somewhat better explanation for my feelings than "I'm sad because my girlfriend broke up with me.")

I want more than anything to be friends with her, to be her best friend, but where do I start? Part of me really want to just be okay right now so I can get on with it and spend time with her without it being weird. But I know that's dumb and unrealistic, because if I was okay right now, if it didn't still hurt, then that would mean that it meant so little to me that I could be over it in a week and a half.

But maybe this is, in a way, a good thing. I worried for a long time that I didn't really know how to feel. That something really bad would happen and I wouldn't be able to handle it, because I shut myself down emotionally for so long, but now I know that I can handle it, and even though it sucks, I can get through it. It means that I've finally started to open up and get emotionally close to people, or at least I am to her, because if I wasn't, she couldn't have gotten close enough to hurt me this badly.

Anyways, I'm probably just being dramatic, because she was my first girlfriend and I love her. And when you combine that with my inability to shut my brain off and just feel, you get copious over analysis of everything. Hence, this long and rambling post.