Serious Emotional Cutting

[Channizard]

So last night I found myself browsing my facebook when I happened upon a little group. It was recently formed, and three people had joined. It was titled after my old RP, and it's members were three old friends of mine from another forum. It was at this moment, that I felt I'd just been stabbed in the back. I had left the forum due to some personal issues and had ended an RP that I poured my heart and soul into with some friends, hoping they would understand.

They didn't.

Shortly after I left, I checked back and although the original thread was closed, a new one had been erected in it's honour. A continuance, to show that they didn't need me after all, and to continue on with my own idea after I had asked them to stop. It was at this moment, that I wanted nothing to do with any of them anymore.

So to see this on my Facebook, where they frequently update their statuses about the RP with quirky little phrases, was heart wrenching. And this morning, I rechecked my facebook to see if I could find it, who else would have joined, and if I could hide it from my feed.

But then I realized something. Would I want to hide this? Did I not want to see everyday what they were doing, how they were doing and whether or not it would ever end? Truthfully I wanted it to. I had hoped it would die a month after my absence but unfortunate for me, it has continued on for nearly 9 months. I didn't want to see this anymore. I didn't want to reminisce on the good times I was missing, and the inside jokes.

Yet I did.

I scoured their feed and their statuses and each time I did, I felt a pang inside my chest. An unbearable sensation that with every sentence reminded me of what I had given up, and the more I looked on, the reason for why I had sacrificed this had gotten dimmer and dimmer.

I guess what this thread is supposed to be... other than a rant... a thread for open hearted confessions. Have you ever looked at previous emails from your ex, and wondered often why you had broken up? And if you had done things differently, would you be together? Do you ever look at pictures of you and your friends and wonder why you drifted apart?

Chat logs, blogs, anything and everything that you feast your eyes on, reminds you of a time when you were once happy with this person, yet wrenches you back to reality that you just aren't meant to be in the same chapter of your life anymore... Do you ever look upon these things, purposefully, and bring yourself emotional harm?

 

[lost4life]

i have a habit of doing this. Looking at old photos of ex's and friends and remembering when times where better. Also listening to songs that are strongly associated to my ex. I have yet to know why i do it since it kinda makes me sad but i do it.

 

[Nocturne]

I tend to do it alot too. In different forms though.

I start to let the weight of the world crush me some days. I think of all the drug use, and alcohol abuse (which leads to tons of other family abuse, death, etc) and it gets me down alot. Sometimes it's just those thoughts in general or from people I knew and how it messed them up, and sometimes see my friends who never did that sort of thing, start moving towards that path.

Then the whole thinking of past relationships and different happenings involving them, it can get me down as well.

I think we all do it in some ways and some more often than others

 

[Rydia]

Lately I have been doing exactly that.

About a year ago, I left a group of online friends because of a lot of crap that happened about a year ago. We had a lot of fun back in the days and they sort of became like a strange virtual family. But a few things went down and on of my RL friends was the main target, so I left that group out of loyalty and I figured that an RL friend was more important than an online one. Lately I have been looking back and wondering if it was the right thing to do. I have started to really miss them especially after I visited their forum and saw that most of them were still together. And some even keep in touch with other members that had left. I looked at old pictures, old MSN chats, and screen caps and felt kind of sad.

I have thought about removing them as friends on facebook. We don't talk there. All I do is read some of their statuses on the news feed. But I just can't bring myself to remove them. I don't know I guess it's holding on to a little part of them.

Another thing, though I haven't done so recently, is look at pictures from high school. I have drifted away from most of my friends in my high school group and I did try to hang out with one a few years ago but it was so awkward because we no longer had anything in common. I look at the pictures and feel sad because we did have a lot of fun back then.

 

[Channizard]

Rydia that's damn near the exact same thing I went through. =/

This group of friends had begun to clash with my bf, who I was living with irl but I met online and knew all these people way before I ever did. His issues with them were deep-set, and ultimately I needed to choose him or them. The girls of the group got into a hissy fit, saying you should never choose a boy over friends... but especially when this boy and I had been together for 2 years, and when they all found out they pretty much shat themselves and took the piss out of us, I was worried that if I chose them that same sort of situation would end up happening again sometime... and it did.

I actually even one day sent a message to one of them asking for a peace treaty and trying to explain why some of the things happened in the past, but I never heard back from her. =/

A lot of them I keep on my Facebook as well, even though the few times I've commented on a thing or two they either ignore me or call me a name, I don't know why I don't want to remove them.

But considering the FB Group they created when I started this thread, I think they may have blocked me from viewing/wanting to join it. Because there's maybe a good 10 friends who would have joined it and updates on my feed would keep getting posted, and thus, making me more depressed... So I guess that's a good thing.

Is it just me, or does it seem like things that happen online like this are harder to brush off than irl?

 

[Channizard]

Ugh, the whole cutting them out of my life process might go a lot smoother if one of them would stop inviting me in their group msn chats which are always riddled with RP talk. lesigh...

Sorry for the bump, needed to vent, no one to vent to...

 

[FinalHeart]

I do this same exact thing. I think it's more of a thing that I want the person(s) to be unhappy without me, yet when I realize that they are possibly even MORE happy without me, I feel horrible. Yet I go back. Yes, it's selfish of me to feel this way, but I don't act on it. I can't really control how I feel anyway, so I don't know if I should be guilty about this or not.

I also tend to get very nostalgic as well.

 

[Sepalcure]

I suppose I cope with things a little differently. I actually cut out all sources of contact with a friend recently in the hopes that she would get "the hint." She didn't so no more friendship status for her. Occasionally I would sort of catch a glimpse of this ex friend, wonder what it would be like to say "hi", you know strike up a casual conversation, and then this would always end up with a bad notion--that things would get decidedly ugly. So . . . yeah.

However there were a few times in my life where I would look back on my two other ex-friends with a sort of longing feeling. One of my ex friends was a boy from middle school and the other one was a girl from my first year in HS. The boy was someone who I confided in as equally as he confided in me. We met on the bus and so everyday we would sit, talk about our problems: guys and gals we liked, how to approach said love interest, yada, yada, yada. He was a genuine friend. He was never really popular, kind of a nerd like moi, kept to himself mostly, until . . . he started gaining friends which in hindsight I didn't mind. It was cool that he was gathering company but it was the nature of the company he gathered that bothered me. They were snobby, outspoken, abrasive, and just not him.

He started to warp into them. I hung with my newly acquired friends, the ones who stuck with me 'till now. My bus mate kept changing and so I couldn't change with him, I refused to. He started to get snobby and abrasive too so one day when I couldn't tolerate him, his new mean words, his self-centered attitude, and his stupid childishness, I dropped him. Sent him a lengthy angry letter, ignored him on the bus, and never talked to him again about any of my personal problems.

When he moved to another school (because he claimed that private school would be easier than the public one we used to go to), I missed him dearly. I used to cry, I mean at one point I'd crushed hard on this kid. I used to wonder what it would be like if he hadn't moved, gotten any of those bitchy friends, gotten brainwashed, and just changed . . .

Losing a friend sucked. Seeing a friend warp into someone who they never were when you first encountered them sucks. Having them sit away from you and talk to other people that they label as "besties" sucks and it's so painful . . . especially when you spent multiple years pouring tears, secrets, and hugs into that friendship. It's kind of like they balled up your friendship into a disposable wad of tissues and gave it to you as if to say, "Here, sorry I couldn't maintain it as well as you could. I'm off to greener pastures."

I've lost a good deal of friends like that boy I mentioned . . . Dylan . . .
I still think of him every now and then . . . just vague recollections. But for me, personally, one loss allowed me to find new and usually better friends. His leaving opened up new avenues for me. He actually taught me to not beat myself up so hard, to take on the "fuck what people say about you" attitude because I had to hear it from him, someone who I once-upon-a-time trusted with all of my heart. It takes a long time to get over something like that, but sometimes friends were meant to drift apart.

Sometimes . . . we weren't. Sometimes you can't control what can break up a years worth of friendships: a move, a death in the family, an accident, a heartbreak, yada, yada, yada. Anything can happen. So just cherish the remaining friendships you do have and open yourself up to new ones.

I'll go into some of my online friendships in another post too, if you'd like.

I hope this will cheer you up.

 

[Valvalis]

Every once in a while this happens to me Usually when I run across something that reminds me of an old friend, or a current one who hasn't gotten in touch with me in a while. I didn't have very many friends in school, but I did have a lot of friends at my old job after I got out of high school. I never hung out with any of them outside of work because I had transportation issues and was often busy with college, but I'd always thought it would be fun to keep in touch with them and maybe hang out with them at some point. The thing was, the place I worked had a huge turnover rate, and I stayed there for almost 6 years, so many of these people left while I was still working there, and I never saw or heard from them again. After I eventually moved and left that job, I looked up a few of them on Myspace, but I've never been able to bring myself to get in touch for some reason I get kind of nostalgic when I see their pictures and some of the things they've written (such as mentioning the job we worked at), but at the same time I feel like if I were to contact them after all this time, I don't know whether we would be able to be friends again, or if it would just be weird and we'd have nothing to talk about, since a lot of the fun and joking around that we did was job-related. Plus I'd be worried that they'd think I had some sort of ulterior motive for getting in touch or something, even though there's nothing I can really think of that would qualify; because even though I enjoyed their company, I'm not sure if I ever really gave off the impression that I wanted to hang out with them outside of work; otherwise they might have asked me more often or something I'm still really not sure if I'll ever be able to get in touch with them though, because I always worry that returning mentally to that time period will bring back some of the bad memories I had that weren't related to them as well.

As far as current friends, I have 2 in particular who have been mostly online pen pals lately, because they live at opposite ends of the country from me; and every once in a while I'll find myself listening to a particular song that reminds me of them or something and end up depressing myself because I'm never able to talk to them lately. One of them, my best friend since 6th grade, recently moved back to where I am, but she still hasn't bothered to get in touch with me, even though I've called her a few times since (her mailbox is always full ), emailed her, and messaged her on Myspace. And she's been my best friend consistently throughout the years--we've never once argued about even a single thing, no matter what stresses we were going through in our lives--but I haven't talked to her now for about 10 months O_O And I know that if I were to get a hold of her again, it'd be just like old times again; but on the other hand I'm really started to get irritated by this inability to get in touch with her. The last time I emailed her, I actually had told her about a really important project that I'm working on that means a lot to me--something that I'd never really mentioned to her before--and I was hoping to hear her opinion on my doing this and get some feedback, just to see if she thought it was cool or even a good idea. And she never responded to it. And neither did my other pen pal (here goes my segue), who is a working musician and whom I've supported for almost 10 years now by complimenting his music, offering advice on a few things, and even buying two of his CDs to help him with their release figures And he's constantly online promoting his music and sending out group list emails, and yet he can't respond to the first email I've ever sent him concerning this project of mine...even though he's given me a one-liner response to my "Happy Birthday" message in the interim, mentioning nothing other than something along the lines of "I'm good, how are you?" etc. I received no birthday messages from either of these people either, by the way, even though they both got them from me All in all, because I realize this is just turning into a rant, even though I still consider them my "friends," I always get depressed whenever I think of them now, because I don't understand why they don't want to talk to me anymore, and whenever I see their huge lists of friends on Myspace I always think "Oh, I bet they're still talking to all THOSE people though, because they like them better ." I've often felt throughout my life that I'm always the "last resort" friend that people will only talk to if all their other friends are busy, and whenever I stop and consider this I get into a funk for a few days at a time, even though I know I shouldn't. But I haven't really found any evidence against this theory, so inevitably I find I just have to stay away from their Myspace pages and the like in order to avoid said depression moments.

 

[ANGRYWOLF]

The friends stuff..sure I miss them.

I broke up with some because one of them wasafter another person's spousesignificant other and I feltthat was immoral of her to go after him.

She was a cutter..a young woman who cut herself to escape her own past issues/problems.

I don't cut.I just lament.

My wife died back in 2001 unexpectedly from aheart attack.A few months later my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she died.

I miss them terribly.and I hate just about everything except my kinds and my sisters and my late wife's family.

I am an old tired and grey wolf.

I play sad songs on my computer and I look at the pictures of happier times and sometimes I cry about it.

Tragedy changes aperson and often not for the best.

 

[Rydia]

As far as current friends, I have 2 in particular who have been mostly online pen pals lately, because they live at opposite ends of the country from me; and every once in a while I'll find myself listening to a particular song that reminds me of them or something and end up depressing myself because I'm never able to talk to them lately. One of them, my best friend since 6th grade, recently moved back to where I am, but she still hasn't bothered to get in touch with me, even though I've called her a few times since (her mailbox is always full ), emailed her, and messaged her on Myspace. And she's been my best friend consistently throughout the years--we've never once argued about even a single thing, no matter what stresses we were going through in our lives--but I haven't talked to her now for about 10 months O_O And I know that if I were to get a hold of her again, it'd be just like old times again; but on the other hand I'm really started to get irritated by this inability to get in touch with her. The last time I emailed her, I actually had told her about a really important project that I'm working on that means a lot to me--something that I'd never really mentioned to her before--and I was hoping to hear her opinion on my doing this and get some feedback, just to see if she thought it was cool or even a good idea. And she never responded to it. And neither did my other pen pal (here goes my segue), who is a working musician and whom I've supported for almost 10 years now by complimenting his music, offering advice on a few things, and even buying two of his CDs to help him with their release figures And he's constantly online promoting his music and sending out group list emails, and yet he can't respond to the first email I've ever sent him concerning this project of mine...even though he's given me a one-liner response to my "Happy Birthday" message in the interim, mentioning nothing other than something along the lines of "I'm good, how are you?" etc. I received no birthday messages from either of these people either, by the way, even though they both got them from me All in all, because I realize this is just turning into a rant, even though I still consider them my "friends," I always get depressed whenever I think of them now, because I don't understand why they don't want to talk to me anymore, and whenever I see their huge lists of friends on Myspace I always think "Oh, I bet they're still talking to all THOSE people though, because they like them better ." I've often felt throughout my life that I'm always the "last resort" friend that people will only talk to if all their other friends are busy, and whenever I stop and consider this I get into a funk for a few days at a time, even though I know I shouldn't. But I haven't really found any evidence against this theory, so inevitably I find I just have to stay away from their Myspace pages and the like in order to avoid said depression moments.

I have something very simular happening to me. I feel like I'm growing apart from the person that I considered my best friend for the past five years. I call her to ask her out, and she is usually to busy with work, school, or family dinners (on friday night nonetheless!) I went a few months with out seeing her. I asked if she wanted to go do something on my birthday, but she never got back to me. (I sent her a text, left her a message, sent her a facebook message). And she didn't ask me to go out for her birthday. I wondered if she was giving me hints that she wanted to cut ties to me. But she will still write on my facebook, chat with me online, or sometimes text me random messages or even ask me to do something with her... so I dont' know what to think. I mean, if she did want to cut ties I wish that she would just tell me so that I don't have to wonder if I am bothering her everytime I try to contact her. And I also wonder if I am just her last resort friend.

I recently asked her to be a bridesmaid in my wedding and she did accept. I also got back into contact with one of my best friends from grade school. We went to different high schools so we sort of lost touch, got back in touch the summer before freshman year of college, and grew apart again because we both chose majors that required a lot of our time. (she was art i was OT) And it's great being friends with her again. I often wonder if I should have asked her to be the bridesmaid instead. I already have five and it would be difficult to add another.

As for the online friends that I lost touch with. I could probably go back to them easily, but I have a stupid pride issue where I'd feel a little desparate going back. And I also feel like I'd be a complete ass to my rl friend if I did go back to their group. I still have the old chat logs, and screen caps but those make me sad