Discussion - Realizing that our friends don't grow along side us

@Laura

I've amazing friends and I love them so, so much. But lately they have had to deal with very difficult things in their lives, and I've been there for them constantly. But they don't get that them talking to me, and crying their hards out with me, is slowly killing me from the inside. One of my friends has to deal with a suicide in the family and I've had to deal with a suicide a couple of years ago which I've kept quiet about ever since. No one knows about that. And my friends keep coming to me for support and I can't give it all the time anymore because I'm so tired and afraid and I just want to fully break down and be held. But by whom?

I hate how temporary friends are. No one, in my 18 years of existence, managed to stay. Everyone leaves. I feel like shit sometimes because people would have their own "person" and I don't have one. I get so lonely and frustrated. I don't know who is really there for me. People would often say that they are always there for me and they are only a call or a text away but I don't wanna bother them. I have been suffering in silence for so long. I don't wanna bother anyone. I don't wanna feel like such a burden to people. I feel like all I ever do is give out negative energy and that's why i try my hardest to just brush it off but it's so damn hard. I have friends, yes, but I still feel so alone. I mean who would wanna listen to me, I can't even express how I feel without feeling sorry for burdening them.

It feels a bit lighter to know that I'm not the only one. Kudos to everyone who lost a friend. I know it sucks but you'll be okay soon enough.

Just know that you are loved.

I used to cling onto my friends so much that I realize their own journeys might had been dragged / slowed down for me. And that only made me realized how self conscious and self centered I could have been. And neither of us would want to see us getting stuck and not moving forward because that isnt healthy for both parties. So we moved on, and let the love stays at where it should be.

for most of my life i had one best friend who i'd played with since we were both babies. we grew up together as siblings but started to drift apart when we started university.

last year our relationship became very strained and i had to admit to myself that we weren't best friends any more. the realisation was very painful for me but i'm learning to move on from it. i still consider her a friend and we occasionally meet up but it's nothing like how it used to be.

i realised a lot of my pain was from wishing it could be like how it was when we were kids, and a large part of my recovery was realising this was futile and impossible since the conditions had changed too much.

i still miss the friendship but i'm developing a more balanced perspective on it and all my other relationships. i've decided to reject the idea of having a 'best friend' and now i try to cultivate deep friendships with lots of people without labeling it.

Friends are very hard for me. I always find myself being the only kind part.. a friendship should be mutual right? yet I'm the only one who cares...

To me the biggest disapointment was a friend I had from year 9 to year 11. On year 12 she went to a different highschool and was the fakest thing I've seen... She had different friends and refused to tell them who I was....

After me trying so hard for her and helping her adjust to our highschool, when she was somewhere else she completly cut our friendship.. she was ashamed of me...

After year 12 we went to the same university. She was super... "friendly" when we went to do the papper work. Yet when I was being bullied by other "friend" , she completly abandonned me again for her new friends.

Honestly is better to be alone than to have crappy friends...

I believe one day I'll have at least 1 solid friend... someone who don't only focous on new friends, or in a boyfriend or who just want my company when is convinient..

I have a friend but we've never actually met in real life because we met online and we're both from 2 different and very far countries from each other. I don't know what's his perspective about me, whether I'm actually a friend to him or just some stranger he just have withstand, but he is a friend to me. I can't be there for him everyday I can only ask how things are going on there through texts and he sometimes say he's fine and sometimes not. Lately he's been having a hard time there, the last time I talked to him he said that he's really depressed about a personal stuff he told me. I told him that if he needs to talk about it my ears are open and I won't mind if we'll have a call (because he's never seen or hear me since I'm really shy) but he just left me on read, he still sends pics but doesn't talk to me and I understand that he needed space. But then I'm really worried about him, I feel like should be doing more to help him as a friend though at the same time I'm scared that I might just make things worse. What should I do and how can I help or make him feel better?

I had a bestie who fell in love with my brother last summer, and she was the only person that I would talk about my problems, and she's not here anymore, because the only person she seems to care about is my brother, and that's really hard for me but she doesn't understand that, and pretends like everything is okay and i feel like since we're not close anymore I'm not close to any other of my friends and i just feel like the friends i hand were never really my friends.

I was besties with someone I met in 6th Grade. We ended up in the same class for 3 years. In high school, we got split up, we attended different schools because of where we lived. Even so, we hung out during the weekends, and kept in touch through emails. She met her husband (boyfriend back then) in the summer of our 11th grade. When we met afterschool or on weekends, he would tag along, but she apparently told her parents that she was out to see me. But she was actually using me as an excuse to spend time with her boyfriend. Then, came University. I was accepted at a University away from home (a 9hr drive away), and she attended the closest University. I tried to keep in touch with her online. I withdrew from University after one year and went home. Only to find out my family was moving to another city (an hour drive away from where we both lived). We had lived in the new city for seven years. But we met up once a month, mid-point, at a mall that the distance was split for both of us. Sometimes she came out and we met for lunch, her boyfriend would give her a ride. We usually met for our birthdays, to give each other gifts, or just to catch up on our lives. When we met at the mall, there were times where she cancelled last minute (one too many times), mainly because of work. I finally moved back to my hometown 3 years ago, in the beginning, we hung out like the usual times. Then, I felt that we had drifted apart through all those years. I ended up suggesting to call it quits. We were best friends, to just neutral aquaintances. She got married 1.5years ago. The husband lost his mum from cancer, so his dad lives together with them.

Of all the years I treated her as my best friend, of all the times we hung out, I was always the initiative one. I'm always the one asking her when she's free to meet up. Not once was it the other way around. When we were in that city for seven years, I worked 4 different jobs, and thought about our friendship. I was getting tired of this one-way relationship, I felt like I was the only one trying to keep our "friendship" alive. I tried telling her my feelings about this, she said that this is her personality. That this is what she's always been like, and to me, it seems like she thinks that it's perfectly normal. The more I thought I about it, the more I think she's being selfish. That she doesn't understand that relationships (whether that be friends, coworkers, etc) that it should be a two-way interaction. I guess she was the submissive kind, and just allowed her boyfriend make all the decisions back then. When she was in University, she often emailed me about relationship problems. From what I've heard, it seemed his boyfriend was quite the controlling type. But what do you know, they had been dating since 11th grade, and now they're a married couple. He was her first boyfriend.

So, for these 2.5 years after calling it quits as besties, we hardly even message each other. Only messages we'd send each other are like Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Chinese New Year, and Happy Birthday. I told myself, after my decision of ending our friendship, I will not be the first one to contact her ever again. I will wait to hear from her first before I say anything. So, it ended up with just those 4 kinds of text messages I get from her now.

When I met her back in 6th grade, I thought I found a friend for life. Come to think of it, althought I had called her my best friend, we weren't actually that close. She wasn't someone I could talk to when I was going through with my depression. I once mentioned something to her during our high school and univeristy years, she told me, she feels depressed and stressed with school too because she only got 90% on an exam, that she made stupid mistakes. Seeing how she defines depression and stress differently than what my depression is, from that time on, I didn't tell her much about my depression. So, although we were best friends, our relationship was just on the surface. How things are going, life in general, nothing deep and to the heart.

This post came at right time. I was just thinking about my friendships last night before bed. I realized, I don't really have friends. I have coworkers that I have lunch gatherings with once a month. But they aren't my age. They are all grown women, both over 60. I'm half their age. (I will try to keep up with our gathering after I leave my job, my last day is this Friday, although one of them is retired, and I work different shifts with the other one, I got close to both of them when we had once worked together). I don't have any same-aged friends. I have no one to hang out with during my days off. That's why I just stay at home, go on my computer, play games, visit 7 Cups a few times a day, watch Korean Dramas and sleep. I don't have much "life". I have no one to hang with, no one to share deep feelings with, I'm a total loner. Maybe this is why I'm still single. My depression took over about 20 years of my life (turning 31 this month). With past childhood traumas, I don't like going to places with many people, it completely drains my energy. I used to have more male friends than female friends, now, I have neither. I think I might have a trusting issue with the opposite sex, I remember when I shared a tiny bit of what my depression is like with them, they would back away. When I felt I could tell them about the real me, they couldn't accept/understand it, and our friendships ended. To me, it seems no one likes another person who has depression problems. I'm not someone who wears makeup or dressup when I go out; from a young age, I believed in natural beauty. That there would be some guy out there, who would like me for me. The only makeup I wear is lipstick and I wear casual clothes, things I'm comfortable in. I guess there isn't such men out there who are attracted to plain looking women. Anyways, sorry for going off-topic here. It's just when it comes to discussions about relationships, whether that be friendships or romantic relationships, I can go on and on about it~

To be honest, I never had any friend that stayed with me in my life reaching adulthood ( I am turning 18). Everyone doesn't really care or just leaves, or rejects me. And I don't have much experience of making a friend myself. I finally made one friend who has a lot in common with me, but it doesn't matter anymore. I am not allowed to talk to my friend. And slowly we will not hear from each other or see each other anymore. And I went to rant in the loneliness thread. But it really takes experience to have a good statement of this topic. I am possibly never going to see or talk to my friend again. And I am not even comfortable myself for being pitied in a public thread. But this topic involves emotional stuff, right guys? Right?…