allfireburns: Gwen Cooper. Text: "If you think I'm bulletproof you're wrong." (if you think I'm bulletproof...)
Aubrey ([personal profile] allfireburns) wrote2010-10-24 11:20 pm

You're an angry blade, and you're brave but you're all alone...

I've spent the last week or so feeling like I'm fourteen years old and in fucking high school again. And the more I feel like that, the more I realize - when I guess it never really sank in, before - just how much my childhood screwed me up.

It's no one's fault, really. Part of it's the military brat thing - and not all military brats are even like this, it's just that I got moved around a lot more than most. And my mom lived across the country, and my dad was being deployed all the time, and my siblings were much more socially apt than I ever was, so they made friends easily where it usually took me a year or two, and by then we'd be moving again, and... I got used to being lonely. To not being able to count on anyone, because even when they might want to help, they probably won't be available when I need them.

I never learned how to hang onto friends when I moved away, or they did - I usually let go as quickly as possible, because at least there's a clean cut then. When I got into huge blowout fights with my friends, I never learned how to fix it, because I'd be moving in a few months anyway, and what was the fucking point? I still don't know how to do those things, even though I'm a goddamn adult now, and these should not be difficult things to master.

But I feel like I'm losing people, I start feeling lonely and isolated, fourteen years old and fighting the world alone, and I don't even know how to begin to make it better. I know how to let go before I get too badly hurt, how to pull into myself and isolate more so it can't happen again, and...

I've caught myself thinking, a few times the past week, that I should just stop having friends. Stop talking to people at all. Because that's totally a reasonable strategy to avoid losing people, and - seriously, what the hell kind of thought process is that? I know it's incorrect. And insane. I just... I don't know. My emotional toolbox is a little low on alternatives.
dchan: Tsuruga Ren (from Skip Beat) holding a cell phone. text: internet addict (internet addict)

[personal profile] dchan 2010-10-26 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, I grew up in the same house pretty much all my life from the time I was three until I went away to college, and I never learned how to hang onto friends either. The kids I knew from high school? I stopped talking to them pretty much the week after I graduated. It's kind of embarrassing really, my mom still talks to the mom of my best friend in 3rd grade, but I don't talk to that friend anymore! Even people from school, who I have LIVED WITH for a number of years, I don't talk to as often as I talk to you guys (meaning current/former Rifters). It's...kind of ridiculous, really.

If it helps, I will try to remember to poke you more often?
dchan: A winged girl in a cage. text: I seek happiness (i seek happiness)

[personal profile] dchan 2010-10-26 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, and I also suck ass at trying to make up after big blowout fights. I tend to drop off the face of the planet for a while, because even if I *am* sorry (and I usually am), I'm too embarrassed/awkward to figure out how to apologize. It's something I know I should learn how to get over, but...waugh. Possibly I overcompensate instead by being a doormat and not letting on when people have hurt my feelings to avoid getting in fights, which is not a real great strategy either.

My social skills, let me show you them. 9.9