Outgrowing the Group Chat - A Rant on Friendship Grief.

Over the last few years, a pattern started to emerge in my friendships. In almost every close-to-home disagreement, I ended up cast as the villain. My nan used to call me a “fretty kind of female”, a woman who expresses her feelings and such. Gross. And to be real, sometimes I actually was the villain. I could be a gremlin when I was drunk, and overly sensitive in my younger years. But other times? I reckon I was just someone with a below-average talent for people-pleasing.

The weird bit was, the more I owned my flaws and genuinely tried to do better with certain “friends”, the more those same flaws got thrown back at me - I felt haunted by emotional farts.

Almost two years ago my kid was born; something in my soul moved. As he grew, my emotional capacity shrank. I began parenting him, and stopped parenting my friends. I started noticing certain mates who projected their crap onto me in technicolour, and others whose avoidance of feedback made it bloody hard to tend to any major repairs.

An image of me with my bush.

At one point, I asked my therapist, “Why do I keep attracting avoidant friends?” He explained that assertive and avoidant people tend to orbit each other, as they each have what the other lacks. Avoidants bring patience and peacekeeping, while Assertives bring expression and a drive for directness.

It seemed to me too, that the parts we admired in each other were also the parts we fear the most.

Looking back now at how these friendships felt, I realised that one “mate” I’d considered my closest hadn’t actually wanted to catch up with me one-to-one in almost a year. Calls screened. Messages ignored. Social events attended with other humans – yet I continued never quite making the cut. It took me an embarrassing number of years to realise that a mate who claims to miss you but never actually picks up the phone when you call is, in fact, full of sh*t.

If a friend meets your smallest bids for connection with “You want too much,” raise the red flag and walk. Chances are, they’re done - but too scared to say it. So instead, they breadcrumb you with deflection, which is confusing and hurty. My latest life lesson? Some gaslighters don’t shout, they whisper. Believe people’s actions more than their words. If they want to see you, they will make time for you.

I’ve heard people talk about this kind of clarity after big life moments. A birth, a death, something that stirs the spiritual cocktail of being human. In my line of work, I come across stories like that often. Letting go of old relationships to make space for what’s next. For me, it felt like the shedding happened all at once; it was full-on, and fully needed.

I’d spent years trying to “chill out”, to blend into a culture where admitting you’re wrong is like pulling teeth – where I could own my sh*t easily, but others couldn’t. Where any minor boundary set was a personal offence. I tried my hardest to mask up, soften my edges, but honestly I kept buggering it up. I was failing them, and betraying myself in the process.

I stepped back and I waited. I hoped that if I quit initiating, if I stopped dragging certain people to the table, maybe they’d come on their own. Turns out, I was completely wrong on that front, but in a way that taught me something epic.

People move according to their values; and sometimes, that simply meant I was never near the top of someone’s social list.

We’ve all got our own inner compass, our own sense of who feels most important, and that doesn’t always align. It’s just part of being human, it’s rough to feel triaged in connection, but on some level we all do it. Some mates, however, were more about taking than giving. Maybe they didn’t mean to be. Maybe they just didn’t have the capacity to show up for anyone beyond themselves.

Whether they knew it or not, they weren’t built for the kind of friendship I was hoping for.

I am lucky in that, a few golden eggs still gleam, the friends who are meant to be in my orbit right now. I am perching my metaphorical bumcrack on them, incubating those bonds with love and realness.

Here I am writing this blog, currently.

Is There Even a Silver Lining, Breezus? Grab a Monte Carlo and a cup of Joseph: we’re going from Depresso to Progress-o ✨

Every grief-soaked moment has been a chance to take stock of my own identity. Since stepping away from certain friendships, there have been long stretches where it has been me, myself, and I. Sometimes that left my heart feeling very tender. Not just because we all need connection, but because without the distraction of forced catch-ups, I had to face something harder:

I didn’t like myself much.

Sitting with that realisation was the heaviest part (at first). Though, once I stopped resisting and finally owned it, life began to change in a quiet, powerful way. Loneliness has taught me that I need to stay with myself internally. I need to get deeply comfortable with who I am, without waiting for someone else to validate or distract me from my own inner disconnect.

That’s really bloody hard when you barely have time to think, let alone do inner work.

Instead I’ve turned to some easy peasy ways to connect with myself and turn off the ol’ noggen.

• Patting nearly every dog I cross paths with.
• Fully embracing my bush – indoor plants and outdoor garden.
• Throwing myself into new spaces, like social tennis, which has been both hilarious and humbling.
• Putting energy into the friendships that still feel good. I’ve got a handful of beautiful bisches, and I’m working at picking up the phone more.
• Learning how to sit with myself, no noise, no show.
• More of my bush. I’ve been getting back into hiking and soaking up the big ol’ earth. (If you’re craving connection, this is where I seem to have the best chats with lovely randoms.)

Throughout this grief, my personality has morphed as well. I don’t have a need to fill silences anymore, I’m more present, and less inclined to crack jokes for social approval. I can throw out my random existential thoughts, knowing the people around me aren’t afraid of them. I’ve stopped pretending I’m too cool for life’s guilty pleasures, social perception just doesn’t hit the same anymore (since my dog died, I’ve had Far Away by Nickelback on repeat, hahahaha).

And the best bit, I feel connected to my soul – not just my big fat ego.

Fin.