Climbing out of the abyss

I am slowly coming out of a major funk, so I don’t expect this will be one of the usual 500-word screeds. I say that now and then in 500 words, I’ll be desperate for a way to end this post, I’m sure.

Confession: I’m a horrible person. So much so that I use that same phrase when I tweet about feelings like this.

I feel like I'd like to have more friends, or reconnect with friends with whom I've lost touch. But then I remember I'm a horrible person.

— Brian Gray (aka ürb) (@urbanbohemian) September 17, 2015

I realize it’s just my brain telling me I’m a horrible person with no friends but it would be nice if reality didn’t back that up some days.

— Brian Gray (aka ürb) (@urbanbohemian) October 7, 2016

Am I just that horrible of a person? Friends drop off the radar without rhyme or reason & I accept "that's life!". But maybe I'm just awful.

— Brian Gray (aka ürb) (@urbanbohemian) December 5, 2016

Around about this time marks about a year that I’ve been doing Sunday brunches on my own. I did have a partner in crime and standing plans with them, but they just sort of evaporated after a few “can’t make it” bowings out roughly a year ago. And it hasn’t actually been all that bad. I’ve visited new places, I’ve cooked at home, in the past year I started up the fitness regimen again and have lost about 25 pounds — beach body, here I come!

But the bad still feels bad. I’ve mentioned it before, but losing or falling out of touch with a friend can make you feel like a ghost on social media. The outside looking in. You can still see people you’re connected to communicating with or having plans with people, but you feel oddly shut out. And depending on the closeness of the friendship, it can be a lot of connections you have to delete, ignore or just grin and bear. It’s happened before where someone very close disappeared with no notice, and what made it worse was this wasn’t communicated to many (if any) of our mutual friends, so their blissful ignorance just made me sink deeper into a pit.

It makes it hard not to focus on how I feel instead of also thinking about how they feel. Everyone has their reasons, everyone has things going on and not everyone can talk about them. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it makes it harder for me to trust others. Or feel like “we’re all in this together” is something I can truly believe in.

And right now, reading the news every day, I could definitely use some assurance that there’s someone who has my back. Things are really not ok… and that’s led to me feeling less ok. Get up, go to work, go home, sit on couch, go to bed. Like I’m on autopilot. Everything that needs to get done gets done. Work, chores, cleaning, exercise, but it feels like there’s no “me” in it.

Anyway… I’m really trying to break out of that.