#lost friendships

[a-hearts-a-heavy-burden]

I woke up today and was about to message some friends to ask if they wanted to start a Stardew Valley save with me.

....except when I opened our group chat they'd both left it. No word. No reason. Everything was fine when I went to bed.

One of them hasn't shown up in our mutual server at all today despite having an event planned. The other has ignored me completely.

So .... I suppose my friendship, at this point, is 100% disposable.

I genuinely feel like crying. Idk what else to do. Go back on antidepressants that make me miserable but in a different way??

Maybe I should become someone who fakes happiness to fool others. That's my only option to keep friends at this point.

[pomiidor]

one year my ex best friend told me that she’d lost her virginity the year prior but hadn’t told me because she thought i’d judge her. i wanted to tell her i would have moved heaven and earth for her if she asked me to. i just laughed instead.

[mosscaller]

Several, actually.

Many were due on my part because, at the time, I had no idea I had autism or BPD. Coupled with my bipolar disorder it was a serious recipe for disaster.

I'm better at managing things now and have my meds. But the other "friendships" went sideways, and I still have no idea wtf I did wrong. Some faded out no matter how hard I tried to stay in contact and keep working on them.

Some people are not meant to follow you into the next part of your life, and it hurts. But it's just how life is I guess.

[northrn-lights]

I reached out, and maybe I shouldn't have because it tastes like heartbreak.

[grouchydairy]

Spent a decade in friendships where I made sure to reach out and check in and never leave anyone out and always be excited about others interests even if I don't fully like it myself and then I fell sick for two weeks, like really, really, thought I was dying sick from covid, and the only response I got was 'well the rest of us had covid and we're okay', and despite being supposedly healthy and young and fully vaxxed and taking precautions, I got really sick, like heart function was going crazy and couldn't walk to the bathroom without being out of breath sick. (tangent is my guess is that I wasn't actually healthy but docs kept downplaying my symptoms as anxiety and refusing to refer on for a full checkup until I got my new, good, and thorough fam doc). I was fucking terrified and everywhere I turned I was told I shouldn't feel so bad. People stopped messaging. They told me I was being too negative about... You know... The actual shit I was going through. In the end, they started excluding me from stuff by arranging events I couldn't do yet bc of lingering (and hopefully not long covid) , like hikes, high cardio activities,and blamed it on me for not wanting to go. At the depth of the symptoms I had wanted to text someone and be like, shit, I'm terrified, to be told that this is too much. A decade 's worth of friendship as I sat through their breakups, family deaths, etc, not thinking twice. I don't regret being there. I just regret not having noticed that earlier so that when I was in my most terrifying moments, I had no one.

[thatsadsparrow]

but, i have outgrown people.

there are childhood friends i haven't seen in years, and i assume some might not even remember my name. we've grown so distant, i wonder if we were ever friends. i completed grade 10 and changed my school for my junior year of high school like all of my other classmates, and haven't been in contact with any of my friends except the two i still hold very dear to my heart. i'm a high school senior now. as i near completing this final year of high school along with my new friends and an old friend, i wonder how many of them i'll still talk to after this year.

i'm still learning what it really means to outgrow people, and if it's a good thing or bad thing (if there's a concept like that).

[bearlytolerant]

Solas: How can you be happy surrendering, knowing it will all end with you? How can you not fight?

Varric: I suppose it depends on the quality of the fermented fruit juice.

Solas: So it seems.

Solas: You truly are content to sit in the sun, never wondering what you could've been, never fighting back.

Varric: Ha, you've got it all wrong, Chuckles. This is fighting back.

Solas: How does passively accepting your fate constitute a fight?

Varric: In that story of yours—-the fisherman watching the stars, dying alone. You thought he gave up, right?

Solas: Yes.

Varric: But he went on living. He lost everyone, but he still got up every morning. He made a life, even if it was alone.

Varric: That's the world. Everything you build, it tears down. Everything you've got, it takes. And it's gone forever.

Varric: The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. He kept going. That's as close to beating the world as anyone gets.

Solas: Well said. Perhaps I was mistaken.

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[gulabi-shaamein]

i opened tumblr this week after ages, and i just realised that legit all the mutuals i have ever talked to- deactivated:(

I'll never be able talk to them ever again

[dapper-lil-arts]

Unlike Marion, Rarity couldn't play it cool.

[cerleansky]

My therapist was so real for saying the meaning of life is found in connection.

People hug their friends when they meet up and hug them a little tighter when it comes time to say goodbye. My grandfather rebuilt the broken rocking horse my grandmother had as a child, a gift from her father. There's an indescribable ache that goes along with seeing someone you used to know intimately, the becoming of a common stranger. Coincidences that bind, one time I got an uber and the driver used to live in my home before me. It was the last place he saw his father alive as a child and he nearly cried when I told him the walls were still the same colour.

Has anyone ever gotten over their childhood best friend? Is that alone not a testament to the fact we are more than blood and bones.

It's all about connection, friends.

[rennelelorren]

Hi~ I`m with some Aang and Zu

oh and somehow this one was funnier like sketch or idk :_b

[corruptedtwinks]

pouring-out-poetry \\ Lidia Yuknavitch \\ ??? \\ Haruki Murakami \\ Anne Carson \\ Catherine Abbey Hodges \\ Anne Sexton \\ Germaine de Stael \\ Anne Sexton

[northrn-lights]

I was sincere, despite the sadness and the hurt, I still wish you the best. May you be happy, even if I won't be part of this happiness.

[ninjautizm]

I don't remember this but HOLY FUCKING SHIIIIIITT LLOYD WAS CONFIRMED TO BE AT LEAST 9 YEARS OLD HERE AND HE WAS ABLE TO DO THAT??? JESUS FUCK

[ropes3amthoughts]

I’m gonna be sick 😭