YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Posted: **December 4th, 2013, 4:32 pm**

My best friend (in fact, the only real friend I have right now) just sent me this email:

Dear ---,
Regarding the delay in my responding to you, I have needed some time to think about my response to your messages and to contemplate how our friendship has progressed to this current status.

I admit you are correct in your assertions about how I have been distancing myself from you. This hasn’t been a result of “replacing you” with other friendships/relationships, rather a result of feeling burnt out and frustrated in our friendship. For me, our friendship has been pretty stressful. Really since February we have vacillated between states of friendship that were calm/good/fun and dramatic/distressing/upsetting. I realize that you deal with your emotions differently than I do. Actually, I think we are polar opposites-you vent while I distance. I also feel like there is a lot of venting in our friendship-some deserved and some completely unnecessary. The problem for me is that I don’t feel like there is any end to it, only little breaks, and I am having a hard time working through it when I feel it happens all the time. It is like the more you release, the more I take on. I can’t take any more in. I see this when you bring up your concerns-I get argumentative, shut down, upset---difficult to talk to.

So where does this leave us? Truth is I do not feel I can be a good friend to you anymore. I have let things get to a point where I have no compassion and am short-tempered. Therefore, I feel it is best we do not communicate. I sincerely hope you can honor my specific request.

I do wish you the best and always will.

I feel so heartbroken. I feel like I want to at least give the final requiem to this relationship and bring peace to what is clearly her distress over our friendship. I just feel...all over the place. Panicked. I don't know what to do. Most of all, I feel like, once again, I fuck up everything good that happens to me. I really thought this one would be different. I have been getting so much better lately, I know that for a fact and feel it in my bones. The fact that I'm not having a complete and utter outright tantrum meltdown at this email, immediately responding to it with panic, is a miracle for me. But I still feel so fucking heartbroken. Fuck.

Posted: **December 5th, 2013, 2:00 am**

{{{HUGS}}} quickfall {{{HUGS}}}

in human relationships, some stuff is like water off a duck's back, and some stuff is like the straw that broke the camel's back

you yourself admit that you are changing for the better, so you future pattern of relationships will be better, you know this

please do not be so hard on yourself

it is natural to mourn what was lost, don't deprive yourself of mourning, but it is not a statement about your future, it is just something about your past

please take care, all the best to you

Posted: **March 30th, 2014, 1:50 pm**

Quickfall,

I'm heart-broken reading your story. She was your friend, but it sounded like a break-up letter from a lover. I think many of us have received similar communications and felt the way you do. The thing to learn is, as she stated in that you are polar opposites, is that you two are just different. I heard someone say it like this "you key just wasn't a good fit with her lock". It doesn't mean your key is bad. It was just as much her as you. Many women tend to shut down in conflict, as she described herself to do. Just move forward and take what you've learned to the next relationship. You are a changed person, and you can thank this relationship for helping you change.

One thing about myself that I have learn effects people is my tone of voice. I have to pay more attention to it so that what is felt is what I intended to broadcast. What I feel as excitement can be received as aggressiveness or anger. That is just one tiny thing, but it can make a difference.

I'm sure you'll find someone who would be more willing to talk it out with you if they felt hurt.

Good luck.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Once again, completely alone

Once again, completely alone

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