My Struggle With Sadness

For days now I’ve been struggling with sadness, I try to write about it in a journal, I pick up the pen and diary but I can’t write beyond some circumstantial facts — this is what happened. I am unable to write in-depth what happened, how it made me feel, how I am holding sooo soooooo much sadness.

So, here I am, taking help of an online space, once again. It feels both visible and invisible, unlike my journal, which feels like it’s drowning me in it for years (I’ve been writing journals since I was 12–13 year old).

I’m slowly coming to realise that I’ve had to see too much growing up and still I am. I am realising that as an antidote to this, I became isolated. But, it’s not feeling any lighter either.

My therapist also told me I have a pattern of finding faults in people and then distancing myself from them — as a method of keeping them away so that they can’t hurt me. But, just recently it came to me, what I am seeing as faults too are the ways in which they hurt me. After three years of working with my therapist, I’ve been able to tell her that I am not rejecting them, they have rejected me — some of my oldest, closest friends, and their spouses. How do I then continue being friends with them? I am simply distancing myself, they burnt the bridge long time back, just that I kept trying to walk on it and kept complaining that it’s hard because the bridge has faults in it. Never spoke about how much it hurts me to still have to try to walk on it. It’s like I am walking on a bridge with glass shards spread on it. Like the bridge in itself was made of glass, and someone came with a hammer and beat it, so the glass broke and is lying exposed and I am having to walk on it still — sometimes with some more padding (some padded, rugged shoes) that keeps me protected — whereas some times I just feel like I am walking barefoot on it. Sometimes, maybe even naked (that if I fall, I’ll hurt more than just my feet).

Well, all this will take me to an unbearable spiral and I know I will freeze and not be able to write about it then, so I’ll stick to a very recent incident — something from today, something I’d have told my therapist (if we were meeting this week perhaps).

So, my sister and I happen to have befriended each-other’s friends on social media. And sometimes, irl too — we do have some common circles. Now, today, she shared a reel with me and told me that one of my oldest, seemingly close friends has like a homophobic reel. I told my sister, that I have noticed that friend being homophobic irl as well as online, so I have removed them from my instagram. So, I am once again, not surprised but deeply disgusted by my own self for wanting anything else from these people — yes, I called the friend ‘these people’. I am extremely sad that I repeatedly gave ‘these people’ chances they didn’t deserve (at my friendship) by diminishing my own self. By answering their homophobic questions, by turning a blind-eye to the misogynist jokes they shared amongst themselves when I wasn't participating, and to the problematic (‘sanghi’) company they kept. I never asked people to choose sides, but I guess I should’ve. I think I dislike ‘neutral’ friends more than those who choose to take sides. The neutral friend seems more problematic to me than the obviously loud and opinionated ones. At least you know only offensive and hurtful shit will come out of their mouths so you can distance yourself. But, with the neutral ones, they’re trying their best to maintain a good relationship with you — but the cost becomes you diminishing yourself, because your ideas are never validated or invalidated, they’re just heard and acknowledged…and the moment you’re not there anymore, the same idea is being made a joke of in another circle. The idea being same-sex love for example.

I don’t think I want to a friend who will hear me say I like a woman, and ask, ‘but you still also like men, right?’. I don’t want a friend who makes me meet their partner(s) all the time, but will panic if I tell them that my partner is here, why don’t you meet/join us. I don’t want a friend who will acknowledge me dating a person of the same-sex (as a woman), but say that it’s okay for women but it just doesn’t sit right for men (if they’re a man too). I don’t want a friend who is explicitly liking homophobic reels on instagram. I am not here to change them, but I can choose not to choose them anymore.

I am not here to educate anyone out of their homophobia. But just once, I’d like to show how it would feel if I did these things I have to bear; almost as often as I do try to interact with people, stepping outside my isolation once in a while:

If a man tells me he likes a woman, I’d like to ask him, ‘do you want to rape her?’ — because that’s a pretty big and scary stereotype and we’re all man-phobic because it’s not uncommon. When a man says they’re getting in an arranged marriage, I’d ask, ‘is it for dowry?’ — another stereotype that’s existing still for a reason. When a man says it’s okay for two women to have sex but its squeamish if two men do that — I’d like to ask, ‘is it because it is so gross to have sex with a man that you can’t tolerate even looking at it, or even the idea of it?’ … why should then a woman enjoy having sex with a man? Then by that logic, all women should be Lesbians, no? I don’t get it?! I just don’t get why someone wouldn’t want to be with someone of the same sex? Do they not like their own gender??? Is that what it means??? Or shall I just panic and say, listen I don’t know, I can’t come, maybe if you were dating a person of the same-sex, maybe I can meet that partner then (for those who say that if you’re bisexual, you can just get married to the opposite sex… and then we all can be friends na — couple friends). Well, newsflash, I am a fucking couple even with my same-sex partner, what you are, are a bad fucking friend.

But, it’s okay, you do you, while I choose to step away from all these reminders of hurt. All these reminders of rejection.

You and I are not going to be friends on Instagram if you’re liking homophobic reels. One, I don’t my #fyp to be adulterated. Two, it’s time I acknowledge that that’s who you really are and step away.

I am so, soooo deeply hurt by these people who’ve called me their friend, and whom I have called a friend. I am okay saying it out loud — you don’t deserve me anymore. I want people who deserve me to have me — rather than me displacing my hurt and hurting them instead. Few people deserve few good parts of me, and I’d rather take a chance now with those, than keep turning a blind-eye to those who have just been promising a friendship but have repeatedly failed to share one.

I am extremely hurt, and deeply saddened by this loss — but I’ll say it out loud, I’m losing more than one friend, and it’s extremely hurtful to lose someone who’s still alive. I guess then therapy is scary not because it teaches us to love ourselves; Therapy is scary because it helps us uncover the thought that we need to stop loving some people we’ve loved for too long. I guess Therapy is scary because it brings us a loss.