Last week, I promised over on DeviantArt that eve ry Tuesday and Thursday, I would update my Webcomic, Cherished, a schedule that I intended to be devoted to and never fail, in order to use it as a means of therapy as well as for fun and attention.
Today, I didn't update any of the comics, today.
Why? Simple: who cares?
Nobody does, save one person, maybe, and it's only because they're my friend. And even then, nobody else calling themselves my friends cares about anything I do.
You wanna hear pathetic? My own husband doesn't care, either. Oh, he's happy I'm doing something to keep myself busy, out of the way, out of his sight and mind, but that doesn't mean he gives a shit about any content I put out, fan-generated or original and my own invention.
If I can't even get my own husband to give a rat's ass about anything I do, especially Cherished, my first real public original project, the only one I've had the guts to publish, and for what?
Nothing. No one fucking cares.
When I was little, I expected more of myself by the time I was 35. I expected to be published, to have at least one book published, and on the way to publishing more, because people cared. But I was also a fool, someone who believed in magic for too long and never made any real friends until she was almost out of school.
Who cares?
Okay, fine. Maybe not nobody. And maybe not everyone. I can honestly think of one person who is actually invested in Cherished. But to know that I spend hours on these pages, spend more on getting the right picture take, make sure everything is legible and makes sense, going so far as to make floor plans and family trees... and for what?
Who cares?
I'm not sure that can't do this, anymore.
Every day, I am given another hint that I have overstayed my welcome. But I am selfish, and still yearn for love, affection, praise, pride, and loyalty. I want to be wanted, needed, I want to make people happy, and I want to be able to show my entire heart to them. I want to be able to cry. I want to be able to trust, and be rewarded.
Instead, 9/10, I get backstabbed. Stupidly, I realise that people befriend me for the front I put on: a happy, slightly-stupid but well-meaning person who just wants to help people and make people happy. I just never realised what it takes - how much it takes - to even do that. And I have realised that I don't have that.
People earn my trust, and when I trust them, they regret it. They find something ugly within me, something gross, and yet it's something I have never been able to see, simply because nobody tells me what this something is, and they abandon me before I can even ask.
I realised why, today. I approach people as if I am a therapist. I always say, "Oh, I'm sorry this happened! If you need me, I'm here!" And sometimes, they take me up on that. When that happens, I don't realise that from the start, I am creating an unhealthy friendship, based solely on what I can give to the other person, and not on what we can give each other.
I forget that I have doomed myself from the start, because when I eventually mention something is wrong, I haven't realised that that's not why a person befriended me. They wanted the happy side of me, the free, earnest, honest and loving side, one I love to give to people, especially those I love most. I forget that, until the moment I slip up and shatter, I am supposed to be that one friend everyone goes to for help, but whom never needs it. The Mom friend.
I can't do it, anymore.
I'm constantly told that people can take my "crazy", my darkness, the side of me called Mara, because I have done the same for them... until it happens. Save - again - perhaps two or three people, I have yet to see anyone survive past one moment of vulnerability from me.
In these moments, I fuck up and say things I never would say, but am saying to someone else instead of the intended target: me. Recently, a friend that I have known for over a decade ditched me because I snapped at them over an email - and then immediately apologised and explained why in a second email - and they froze me out. They blocked me. They pretend I don't exist. And this person was no cake walk. This person was selfish, always focused on their own feelings, and often lamented that my bad feelings made them feel worse, and now their new dark mood was all my fault. They literally made me feel tremendous guilt for trying to open up and ask for advice with them, every single time. And when I lost it, for the very first time without even wanting to, even when I apologised in an email sent not even five minutes later, they abandoned me. Forever.
Another good one: this person I knew for almost two decades, and after months of ignoring Christmas, my birthday, the birth of my niece, and the death of my dog, this person messaged me to lambast me for what others said (that true, I agree with) and that I and them are what is making this world go down hill. For the record: it was because I support trans people, specifically Mermaids, the UK charity for trans gender children.
I could go on. There's even more, like when a friend distrusted me because I was friends with their exe, and I did nothing wrong whatsoever, they not only abandoned me, but got their new partner to abandon me, and spread rumours about me, or the friend that doesn't seem to know that it's not always fair to demand everyone else message them first, and then guilttrip and blame you for their pain when they don't even reach out, or the one that always always, without fail, no matter how nice they are, manage to sexually harass me in every conversation, despite being told ad nauseam that I am married, monogamous, and not okay with that, or the one that always says it's okay for me to have emotion until i actually do, or especially the one who demands I account for every second of my goddamn life, who cannot even stand a day of silence from me without demanding an explanation as to why I'm silent and this being cruel to them, or...
But then you'll just explain the reason why they do these things, because I literally just told you why a few paragraphs ago.
I am a therapist that either everyone outgrows, or I'm the friend that is not allowed to fee anything but happiness and support for you.
But I'm not.
I'm a human being. I am sick. I am dying from a disease that no one takes seriously, that has every second of my waking (and often sleeping) life in pain. I am lonely. I cannot work or go out. I have no income. The internet is the only way I have ever been able to socialise.
Now, I'm losing even that.
You know what's really funny about all of this? Even though I wrote all of this down, even though it's public and out here for the world to see, including every single "friend" I have listed here (some more than once), nobody is going to care any more than they do now.
Because nobody wants to pay the therapist to hear her problems, after all. And I of course need to pay for the right to a friend, do I not? Often, it feels that way.
Who cares...
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