Closure

This is something that’s been off and on my mind for a long time now.

When I was younger (say... high school-ish), I had this idealized vision of myself as someone who could befriend or talk to anyone. Didn’t matter where they came from or what they were dealing with at the moment; we could just talk and maybe have a meaningful relationship out of it.

This self-imposed ideal persisted through college, particularly in my first year in the dorms. People who knew me then have told me that I seemed to be on top of things and was pretty social, and the room I shared with my roommate was a regular hangout place for people on our floor— and our RA who literally lived next door had to come in and tell us to shut up quite a bit (before joining us anyway).

When I look back on this time after the fact, though, there were a number of people who I tried to be friends with where things didn’t really work out. I was honestly pretty new to the whole business of having a social life (or rather, having meaningful relationships that wasn’t regimented by just school and having a curfew and parents nagging everyday), which meant that it was a lot easier for me to overstep people’s boundaries and personal spaces without fully realizing it. 

I found out years later that there were people I had interacted with who apparently didn’t like me “at all” or felt that we had nothing in common, despite my persistent attempts to be social and hang out with them. And it’s not that I didn’t notice the social cues they were giving me (because when I think about it in retrospect, they definitely gave them)— I just flat out ignored or didn’t consider them at the time... including one off-putting moment where someone literally said “fuck you” to my face for no apparent reason (or at least from what I remember; I was just trying to say hi).

And then there were other people who didn’t stop me from talking to them persay, but often gave me the impression of having one-sided conversations where it was mostly just me talking— and if you know me well, you know that I can kind of be an open book about my life sometimes. This didn’t stop me from trying to talk to them, ironically— but it did feel unsettling, especially when I would try to ask them personal questions as a way of reciprocating and got either vague or shallow responses. 

Unfortunately, even though I didn’t immediately pick up on what these interactions really meant, I wasn’t dense enough to not notice them. I was aware that there was a disconnect between the idealized view of a friendship that I had and the reality of these “friendships” that I was experiencing. 

Not that I didn’t have good friendships in my life— because I did end up with those as well— but for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about the ones who I never got to the same level with. It progressed to the point where even if I wasn’t consciously thinking about it, I’d sometimes have these disorienting dreams at night out of nowhere, where I’d be hanging out with someone who I hadn’t seen in a long time and then I’d wake up sad in the morning when I realized that this person I was hanging out with only existed in my imagination. I didn’t know them for who they really were now in real life.

I wasn’t fully aware of this at first, but I eventually started to collect moments in the back of my mind where people didn’t fully confide in me, or clearly showed a preference for others who I also considered friends. This turned into an insecurity about my own inability to really connect with people who I’d known for years, which got worse after college as I started to notice others who would show up later (on the order of months-to-years) and seem to immediately fit in much better with these people than I ever had.

In the process, I developed a really unhealthy self-critical view of myself. I would often wonder, is there something wrong with me? Am I too much for people? Do I make them feel uncomfortable? Am I a burden?

And then the few times when someone did call me out for something I actually did wrong, I’d immediately fall into an endless pit of self-loathing: I’m such a terrible friend. I don’t think or do enough for other people. I’m just not fit for these people. I’m just doing this for my own self-gratification because I want to be known for who I’m friends with. I'm not thankful enough for the friends I already have.

It’s taken me almost over a decade to finally come to terms with this (somewhat, anyway). I’ve had the benefit of many therapy sessions and long talks with real friends over the past few years to realize that this isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about my self-worth at all, and that I’m not the terrible person that I thought I was.

The reality is that in real life, sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want them to. Not everyone you meet will immediately connect with you, and in many cases they never will. Sometimes it’s just a matter of timing and not being in the right place— physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, what have you— even if it might have worked out under different circumstances. It sucks, but it happens, and it’s just something that you have to learn to live with. And you’re not the only one who experiences this sense of disappointment.

The other side of this, though, is that even with my knowing all of this consciously, there’s a part of me that probably will never really get over what happened in the past. I’ve tried, honestly. But I can’t always control the feelings that come up sometimes, especially when I come across things that remind me of the past. Why else am I writing this whole thing out right now?

There’s a part of me that wishes I could apologize for the mistakes I made, in some cases to people who I probably will never see again (unless by accident or coincidence, but even then it’s not like this subject would ever come up realistically speaking). It’s the part that wishes that we could have resolved this directly, face to face, rather than all that time spent avoiding the issue and second-guessing intentions. The part that wishes that I could have told them, “It’s okay if you don't want to be friends. I’ll understand.”

In all likelihood they’ve probably moved on with their lives. The only reason I haven’t fully is because this is an area, for me personally, that never really had closure. And I realize that having closure for me here means having certain knowledge of what the other parties in this really think about all of the above, because most of what I’ve described has been coming from my own memories and thoughts. It became the most clear to me the other day when, after yet another long day of this topic lingering over my head, I caught myself thinking, “I wish they’d just tell me how they really felt."

Maybe this was really an non-issue all along and I’ve just been overthinking (as I am prone to do) my relationships the entire time. Or maybe what I’ve said has some merit. Or maybe I should’ve just picked up on whatever negative social cues I got in the first place and moved on with my life already.

The point of this all is, I just don’t like living with uncertainty. But I recognize that it’s human to not like living with uncertainty, even though it’s something that happens in life all the time. And these people who I’ve been thinking of over the years don’t really owe me anything.

I just have to learn to live with that.

(I mostly wrote this just to give myself closure.)