If the last decade has taught me anything, it's that there truly is a sense of liberation in becoming as emotionally detached from the people in my life as much as possible.
When I was younger and more naive, the argument could be made that one of my most obvious flaws was I cared about people too much. I cared about both what they thought of me and I cared far more for them than I should.
Despite my ever-present, stubborn refusal to accept it, it would be unfair to put all this on my shoulders. As cliche' also dictates, we don't get to choose the family we're born into, nor do we always choose the people we end up falling for the hardest. And as much as I am deserving of blame for my part in making a mess of those relationships or potential relationships, it's been pointed out on many an occasion that the totality of said blame cannot solely be mine either.
When I set off on my own, following my divorce in 2011, whatever minuscule bits of romantic I'd managed to retain tried to reassure me it was a chance to meet new people, build new relationships and maybe find an avenue to what we're all hoping for when those opportunities present themselves...Happiness.
But, of course, that didn't happen. Instead, I ended up losing just as many friends as I'd made to that time, for various reasons. So I did the only thing that made sense. What people like my mother and some of the therapists I'd gone to to that point had strongly urged me to do.
I stopped caring about people any more, because as best I could tell, people had stopped caring about me.
In hindsight, I don't entirely blame them, either. When you see someone struggling like I was at the time and they're not able to either articulate that in a way you understand, or it affects their behavior in ways that make their presence in your life potentially toxic, the easiest thing to do is just write them off as another lost cause and focus on the people who seemingly have their shit together.
That was a problem for me, though, because those people weren't lost causes to me. They were friends and family that I cared about. People I'd spent years cultivating positive relationships with and not having that as a possibility anymore wasn't something I was willing to concede.
So I didn't. I tried to put out each fraying thread that connected me to them in the hope that I could salvage at least some part of my particular social tapestry. In retrospect, though, I'm realizing more and more that I should've done the smarter thing.
I should've just let the whole thing burn to the ground.
That is, after all, what we're all told to do. In this age of wholly expendable relationships, even with the people who we matter most to, it takes next to nothing to completely shut them out of our lives anymore. It's what the block function was designed for on every social media outlet we're reliant on for relationships and communication nowadays.
Maybe it's because I'm older and was conditioned in a much different time, but I never saw the benefit of being someone who just arbitrarily tossed friendships and relationships away when times got tough. Then again, I'm just as obstinate about the idea of actually talking to whoever it is you're trying to salvage said relationship with, rather than going through text messages or other passive-aggressive means.
By the time I reached thirty-five, I think it finally sank in that what the future held for me involved having next to no connections with people I know or used to know. I won't lie, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but it also came about in no small part because of what happened with Ghost, as well as my inability to get moving in the sort of upward trajectory that affords chances to have a bigger social life.
Being trapped in the stasis of forced mediocrity makes your attractiveness for both platonic and non-platonic relationships incredibly low. As a result, I struggle to keep in touch with even my closest friends from when I was a kid.
Dating is another matter altogether. More than once, I had female friends whom I found myself becoming attracted to, only to have them do the same thing that Ghost did, albeit to lesser degrees. Thanks, but no thanks. I then got to watch them go into different relationships with guys who treated them just as badly as the guys who'd came before, and inevitably, I was called upon to be a voice of reason and a shoulder to cry on.
And I did it. I played my part. But I was again reminded of just why it is that I'm not apparently cut out to be anything other than a disposable friend.
So now, as I approach another birthday in a few weeks, I think I've finally turned the corner on being able to keep people at arm's length once and for all, and my days of being as fully immersed in trying to stay connected to people are over.
It's not that I don't care about them anymore. Instead, I think my compassion has been tempered by all the times where I was slapped down and put in my place for caring as much as I did. There are days when the realization of where I'm at now emotionally does bother me. I know it shouldn't have to be this way, except I don't get a say in it anymore either.
It's an crazy new world. I just happen to be trapped in it.
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