emotion explosion - great intimacy practice but terrible stuff brought up, connection despair
icon: "disconnected (a gif of the lovers from the tv show "Moonlight" standing on opposite sides of a door and both looking devastated. One leans their forehead on the door and the other leans their face on their hand on the doorsill. Underneath the repeating gif is the word 'pain' in a handwriting-font.)"
Yesterday and today have been overwhelmingly emotional. Yesterday was emotional in general, but especially intimacy practice. We had two newbies and usually that means a somewhat low-key practice as newbies usually need at least one practice to get familiar enough to participate fully. But not this time! Everyone shared very openly and there was a lot of resonance around the circle. Everyone had intense topics and even truth-or-truth was intense, yet we finished in 3 hours and as far as I could tell everyone felt nourished. Topaz was actually energized! Afterward Topaz and Heather played "pump it up" (I graciously declined). It was the first time we'd had newbies in a long time, over a year I'm sure. I remembered/realized some things that I will explain when I do the intimacy practice talk at TBC.
But it brought up some stuff I had been repressing - my sense of failure at making new friends. I love the people I have in my life, but new perspectives are important to me and so is the process of learning a new person. The idea that I will never make another friend who can nourish and be nourished by me (without causing me or my people damage) or is profoundly sad to me, yet it feels like fact. I feel like a resounding failure. I feel like it is very unlikely that someone new or hardly known will become my friend and be really curious about me and excited to know me and also nourish me. I think people like the idea of me but not me, really. Or they like me but can't or don't want to do work to connect, because I live too far or they're too busy or don't have the energy or whatever. I'm just too hard. I feel doomed. I don't have any faith in people liking me enough to make up for whatever things are drawbacks about me.
I know that a significant number of people like my ideas, and I know there is a lot of long-distance love and I value that. But it is hard to believe that it's not JUST my ideas that are worthwhile when the vast majority of the times I try to make an in-person friend it doesn't work. It just seems logical that there is something about me that doesn't come through online that makes me not a desirable friend. Or that I'm too much work in general but people can opt out of the work online so they still like me there. Maybe it's just that I am so fucking incapable of small talk and in person I'm either animatedly ranting in an impersonal way or I'm completely silent. I don't know how to just randomly chat with people. I can maybe say one sentence, then I'm stuck and feel worse.
I don't have a medium setting. I just don't know how to do it. Every time* I have connected with someone it has been because I had a raw, vulnerable, many-hour mutual reveal session (or we did the online equivalent with LJ) and shortly after that discussed how to go about the friendship deliberately. Even when I was a teenager that's how I did it (scared Allison off for a few years with that). Not only do I feel incapable of some kind of medium approach, I have literally no idea how to do it. And even if I did, it seems like the worst idea ever because it would take so much out of me and then I still would have to figure out how to move from that (which would drain me) to real connection.
And so now, when I can logically imagine new friendship(s), I don't feel hope and happiness anymore. I feel despair and dread of what feels like the inevitable day when I realize that they don't actually share my values or that they're not willing or not able to do the things that nourish me or they can't or don't want to invest in connection with me or that they only want to get and not to give, or worse, they want to give but they can't because they're in a long-term crisis with nothing to spare.
I woke up this morning and cried for three hours because I feel such despair. So sure that no one will really want to be my friend, because it's fucking work.
And there are some people that I think about trying to build in-person friendship with, but I can't even get up the courage to try, because I don't know if I could handle another loss right now.
I'll get through it, I'll get better. I'm just really yearning, but mourning at the same time and it's a bad combination.