Replacing Poor Support for Great Support

I have been MIA for a while, although I've posted many posts in my mind. While I find blogging here therapeutic, I also experience immense apathy when contemplating posting. Because it's out there on the Internet, people I don't even know can judge me. How tiring. But also, how liberating, because I don't know you, one reader.

I just want to clarify. I have had long conversations with my roommate about my issues, my need for support, my feeling that there is a lack of listening and empathy, and what I would like for her to do. It doesn't help. Everything is still all about her drama. The good news is that she is finally at least making a phone call to get counseling. Whether that actually leads to an appointment is another question. But the other good news is, for the most part, I am consciously making an effort to look for support elsewhere, and recognize that she is incapable of giving me the support I need. Because she has some serious issues. And while I love her, she can be very self-centered. But she probably says the same thing about me.

I've gone through some serious lows in the last month. Anxiety is my sworn enemy. I have a job right now that I, for the most part, adore. It's satisfying emotionally, and I have made some good friends there. I work with some amazing people, and have learned so much from them. One day a few weeks ago, for no reason I could pinpoint, I had one of my worst anxiety attack. Compared to what others go through, my attacks are generally pretty low scale. This one really sucked. Usually it starts with a specific thing that my brain can just not let go of. This time not so much. It was everything and nothing. I hated everything about myself, felt incapable, and yet could not pinpoint a way I was incapable. I felt like my office was closing in around me. Panic, panic, panic. I felt icky. Usually I can talk myself down and tell myself to get a grip, but my heart just beat faster, and I could feel the irrational panic mounting. Fortunately I was able to identify a safe place. I got myself up out of my chair and marched myself down the hall to my friend's office. We'll call her CoolGirl, because something about her personality soothes me.

Anyways, CoolGirl welcomed me into her office and knew right away that something was up. The thing I love about her is that while she picks up on my signals (and let's face it, I wear my heart on my sleeve), and makes it clear she sees, she lets things be without dismissing them. What I mean to say is, I didn't feel like she was dismissing my feelings because I didn't voice them right away. She just let things lie and waited for me to tell her. Meanwhile she soothed me with her chitchat and made me feel safe. She's only a few years older than me, but I want to be like her when I grow up.

We now have an understanding. It doesn't have to be an emergency. In fact, it doesn't have to be anything. We are friends, and I am welcome to come sit in her office whenever I need to be there, whether she is there or not. She gets me in a way that hardly anyone ever has. She reads me well, and I think I read her fairly well. She doesn't try to fix anything for me, although she would help if I needed something and asked her to. She doesn't make me feel like a freak. In fact, she sees tons of positive attributes in me.

I've realized in the past month that I need to stop investing my emotional well-being in friends I badly want to hear my pain who refuse to, and instead seek support to the ones who love me and are there for me without fail. This is one of those things I think most of us get on a certain level. It's talking my sometimes irrational emotional self into remembering this concept. I think I might have succeeded, finally. I am (mostly) done being offended when my few emotionally crippled friends can't or refuse to give me support. I have fabulous friends, who consistently do give me support, and listen to me over and over again if I need to keep talking about the same thing. I have had to back away, in my heart, from a few friends. I still love them, and support them. But I can't spend time obsessing over their crappy friendship skills. I instead accept their limitations. It mostly works. Because really, if I think about it, and obsess about it, and can't stop complaining about it, then really, I'm making my life crappier over friends that aren't that great of friends right now. See, when I say it, it sounds obvious. But my heart is having an epiphany. You know what I mean?