Friendship

Thankful for Friends

/ Self Saving Warrior Princess / Leave a comment

Considering how spectacularly shitty the last 36 hours has been in my brain, it’s also been pretty incredible to see how much my people love me.

Everything from the way Wonder Woman just keeps being here. I keep expecting to be too much and she’s just here and doesn’t seem to flinch. I’m perplexed.

To the friend that just keeps showing up and asking if we’re walking or gym-ming tonight. It’s like she keeps twisting my arm and reminding me to take care of that part too. Gah.

To the friends that are helping figure out logistics and listening online to my trains that keep derailing and helping me pull them back in so I can keep it together long enough to let the process work.

The friends who are keeping games of words with friends going in their spare moments . . .I don’t know if they realize how helpful those games were tonight while I was trying to make some order out of my house again.

And then all of the people who publicly and privately reminded me how making the call was the bad ass self care that needed to happen.

Thank you all.

I made it through one more day.

2/3rds

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Ericka was one of the women Parker and I met in the shelter. She was young, maybe 20 or 21. Such a sweet kid and adored Parker and I.

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Look at this Facebook post. She’s talking about a Mother’s Day potluck, in a homeless shelter. Waking up to make breakfast for 80 people, in a homeless shelter.

We took buses to the light rail to go to a church in the city and then came back and hung out at a crappy little pond that was pretty damn gross but it killed time and gave us something to do. And bread was cheap. Broken wing (Gregory House) was a mean little cuss but he kept going and the other ducks knew to follow him because the humans felt sorry for him and always threw the food to him. Also, there were more geese than ducks, but it was still the duck pond to everyone in the shelter.

Look how normal it all seems in this post. It all became almost normal to us. Wake up, fold up your mats if you are on the floor in the hallways, put away your bins, do your chores.

Ericka died about a year or so later. My heart broke. She fought so hard to overcome her mental health shit, but she lost. Two out of the three people in this post are gone…..

Power

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After an amazing weekend away, I’ve realized that my anxiety in public has virtually vanished. There were multiple times that I went off completely alone in NYC in crowds, without a thought.

I went and retrieved a pizza when they suddenly couldn’t deliver it and throughout the weekend I had no issue figuring out the subway and actually enjoyed getting lost and missing stops and backtracking. It was a puzzle, a game.

I survived one of my worst fears a year ago, and so those people in that giant city have no power over me anymore.

But now those close to me have 100 times more power than they can ever imagine. And it’s power they don’t want, and power I don’t want to give them and it’s become a whole different kind of anxiety that I’m now battling. These trains are just as loud as the trains that used to tell me I couldn’t leave the house.

I know loss, and not in the “we can’t be friends anymore” kind of way, and not even in the “this isn’t working out” kind of way. We had a fight, a stupid fight over stupid shit and she went to bed and did not wake up. And while I know I had nothing to do with Parker’s death, I cannot quiet that voice that tells me I did . . . . it’s part of the process . . .

Because of that, the social anxiety that was always there is now 100 times louder. The fear that everyone else is going to leave gets louder and louder.

Every time someone is angry with me not only do I feel that tension and need to run from it, but I’m internally petrified . . what if I don’t have a chance to make amends. What if there is no tomorrow to say “I’m sorry, this was stupid” after they calm down.

Because of it I end up sometimes becoming incredibly irratic and overbearing and talking over them and even over myself to try and fix problems that aren’t even there because in my mind . .

If I don’t put out those fires I’m going to lose more people.

And i LOVE my people. I love my tribe. With every bit of my being.

I am both thankful for, and sorry to those who have been so close to me this past year. I know I am a lot. And I know that by now, you thought it would not be so much to be so close to someone who you have given so much to. And I do appreciate you, more than you could ever know. I wasn’t on even ground to begin with, and a year ago that ground disappeared. I’m quite thankful that I realized I could fly, but you guys have done more than your fair share of carrying.

I am intense . . and I am trying to get better. All month I have been trying to figure out how things feel so right in some ways, and so wrong in other ways.