This is not a pity party, a sob story, or sympathy grab. This is honesty. This is written by a person who just can't open up.
Trust is a big problem for me. I have had very few people in my life that I truly can trust. Sadly, many of these untrustworthy people have been family members, which makes it so much harder. I've had crappy friends, but that doesn't make me unique. Join the club, right? When it's your family though, your close family, then how do you accept strangers? How do you put your trust in people that you don't know well, when your own relatives have proven to not have your best interests at heart?
Therefore I have let my friendships fall away. It's not that I don't have any - I just don't hold on like other people do. There have been quite a few one-sided friendships in my past, and I also despise Face(less)book. So I just don't keep up like others do. But it got worse. I retreated pretty badly. Now I'm going to talk about it.
My PPD was the most devastating event of my life, yet so unbelievably important and helped me become who I am today. I pulled myself out of the mud to be a much better person. However, in the midst of a serious depression, I went through a life-changing event. While it seems minor, it not only set back my recovery from depression, but also completely ruined my ability to trust.
My relatives and I threw a party for another relative, in conjunction with her "friends." Frankly, if my friends behaved toward my family the way they acted towards us, I'd be beside myself. Not only were we made to feel unwelcome and like a burden, one woman in particular, who I call Thurl, humiliated me in front of all of the guests. She snapped at me for asking for assistance with a party game in front of everyone, and repeatedly gave snippy answers to questions regarding the party itself. Thurl had no regard for anyone in the family; she even chewed out another family member over a missing party favor. Alright, we all meet shitty people. There are real assholes out there. The problem is that the guest of honor did nothing afterwards. She did not apologize. She did not even acknowledge that it happened. I don't know what my relative was thinking. Sorry, she wasn't thinking.
Why was this all so infuriating? Because I had Thurl's daughter over to my home during my husband's birthday celebration and treated her like a member of my family. Such unbelievable disrespect. But there was no recourse. My relative wasn't sorry. And it completely fucked me up for over a year. I would not let anyone new into my life. I did not want to have any friends, because how could I trust them? If I couldn't rely on my own family to back me up, then what about a friend? My family member hurt me. I now know we were never friends, but man did that sting.
So what got me out of it? Time. The realization that there are simply shitty people in this world. Love for my daughter. Not wanting to be alone anymore. It seems so small. But that's the problem: Small incidents for a person with trust issues seem so huge. If someone wrongs you once, they WILL do it again. That's just how my mind works, and I hate it. I want to be normal. I want to have good, trusted friends. But there are days when I question whether I can do it or not. Today is one of those days.
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