genderjumper | Entries tagged with bestie

For the past few years, holidays and birthdays have undergone a transformation for me. It's hard to safely gather; when money's tight it's hard to save up the money to do something special; and when your relationship with time is changing it can be hard to find inspiration. Even before the pandemic, it was hard to match the holidays of my youth or the community feel of polycules past, but if you'd seen me then I was fucking miserable. How many Chrismases in a row did I sleep through after staying up until 4 trying to get everyone else's presents perfect? Not really out of joy, mind you, just out of a sense of obligation. I was trying to pour my affection out for a lot of people but I didn't have the organizational skills (or energy reserves) to do justice for most.

When my best friend emeritus and I talked last week, she confessed disappointment that I hadn't put much effort into her past couple of birthdays or holidays. But I'm slowly coming to terms with gift-giving not really being my thing right now. I'm not sure I've ever been as good at it as I thought, and these days I'm comfortable putting as little effort as I can justify (and with so much going on, it becomes a lot).

But I don't want to be solipsistic about it.

Today is going to be my nesting partner's birthday, but her father is in the hospital and our plans are waylaid. I'm not sure either of us has the initiative to dream up something bigger than a custard run.

But here's the thing: if we go on that custard run, we'll blast great music, we'll laugh and hold hands, and we'll feel so fucking loved by the little things that the custard won't matter. This is someone who has sewn her wild oats and experienced a wide range of affections and she draws comfort from acts of service now. It matters to her a lot more that I show up for her every day and there's no one I'd rather be stuck in an apocalypse with. I want to do more, but if I put a lot of time and energy into some big gesture or gift, what other quality time would I be sacrificing? What other responsibilities might I ignore or forget?

I can't explain all this to emeritus. She's learning to value herself (perhaps for the first time) and I honor that for her, but I also can't really tell her about all the heavy stuff going on in my life (and she never bothers to ask).

I kinda want to do a Facebook post for my partner's birthday, but I don't want it to detract from everything else we have going on (and there's no guarantee she'd even see it this month). I'm mostly going to focus on showing up.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Taking a break from Whiplash. That movie is intense.
Current Music: Taking a break from Whiplash. That music is intense.

I've never had a consistent best friend for more than a few years at a time.

( Backstory )

So we finally talked last night, and it was interesting how many of the same words and possibilities we were considering: her therapist asked if she wanted to de-escalate and she said no, but she also acknowledged some baggage with the term "best friend" and elaborated on just how easy it is for her to receive neutral statements as pressure. I told her that the chaos in the air tells me we're only going to have a harder time connecting away from text, and that my efforts to document my mental health cycles are intended to allow people to choose their level of engagement based on predictable dynamics, but I'm not sure she groks how literal I mean these things. I fluently shift between hyper-abstract and hyper-literal communication and it never occurs to me that someone might not be keeping up.

(Echos of Foucault, who must be read slowly because he writes theory in deliberately obtuse ways to foster caution and discourage misunderstanding; my unique style of communication intimidates many because they think it's formal or hyper-cerebral, but it's when I let my guard down and attempt to be casual with people I trust that the other person gets devastated by some offhand observation delivered without tact because I constantly process heavy stuff and fail to anticipate how triggering it can be for friends.)

It was a mutual conversation, but the agenda centered her worries and needs and left little room for mine. B tapped out after 90 minutes, literally starting to lose her voice as I rushed a couple of clarifying questions. I have a few action steps to hopefully nurture things, but I'm in no hurry to lean on her or be casual with my enthusiasm (which managed to trigger this latest explosion because I wanted to say I loved a book but didn't pay attention to punctuation or tone).

My enthusiasm may be the purest and most innocent part of myself. (I credit it to my best friend from 8th-9th grade, who taught me to love learning and be shameless in doing so. I last saw him in 2015, just before he moved back to Europe and a couple of years before I closed a lot of social doors because the people on the other sides rarely checked on me.) In person or over the phone, there's never any doubt that my clumsiness comes from excitement, but its impossible to adequately convey over text. The reflexivity continues.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: alone on a metaphorical beach
Current Music: my partner's 80s punk

Had a heart-to-heart with my nesting partner tonight about recurring issues with my best friend. Thematically, it was surprising how much of the process echoed conversations we'd become fluent in long ago regarding romantic relationships: compatibility, natural ebbs and flows, "price of admission," and of course how difficult it is to de-escalate with love rather than just break up and never speak to them again.

And de-escalation looks like what needs to happen here.

This person has been my go-to for 4-6 of the past 8 years, when we went from distant Face-friends to bonding over shared caregiving traumas. Our friendship really solidified when we each started to confront our toxic fam-os and experiment with new boundaries, and deepened further through COVID solidarity, health scares, new phases of queerness, and the nonconsensual detachment of people who were once dear to us.

But sometime last year, she made the decision to stat processing more of that stuff with her therapist, and instead of that freeing up time to share interests or laugh and sing, it led to her calling less. And being more sensitive about when and how I asked to connect. And losing her temper more often for perceived slights (some of them were triggers rooted in childhood trauma, and I never tried to treat them otherwise, but it was like she needed to stay mad at me for weeks, even in instances where we misunderstood each other entirely, as part of her process).

I'd like to think I'd have a higher tolerance for it if she were more self-aware about it, but it's just given me more time to contemplate our incompatibilities: she compartmentalizes everything (sometimes baiting me with intentions and then snapping at me when I check on those intentions) and I'm pretty much the opposite; if I tell her I love something with the wrong emoji or punctuation, I'm talking down to her, but when she specifically says the behavior bothers her because it's something men do and I gently remind her that such phrasing is dysphoric for me I'm just making things worse.

My partner surprised and delighted me tonight when she asked, "She knows you're in love with her, right?" LOL and I thought I was so good at keeping that to myself! But the truth is, I fell out of feels last fall, when after the first of these squabbles I started to ask these questions. At the time, I thought it would make me a better friend -- and indeed, I feel like I've been more chill since, no longer wasting even neuron on some sort of misguided hope that a) we could be together some day and b) it wouldn't be a total shitshow if we were -- but her behavior hasn't really changed. Everything has to be on her terms, and the busier her life gets the harder it is to know what those terms are. She always initiates the schedule, and when she complains and I make suggestions, she gets frustrated and gives up.

(My nesting partner is magical and I'm so grateful we get each other this deeply. We are so lucky to be such a great team.)

All that solidarity and listening she used to offer in exchange for solidarity and listening through her problems? It's just not there, and it's inconvenient of me to ask when I should look for it. When we do hang out, it's more rushed and less deep.

What I don't think she sees and I do is that the chaos factor of the world around us is ramping up, and things are only going to get worse from here. Our best friends aren't just the people we can open up to when we have plenty of space to be vulnerable, but the people we have to trust not to mean us harm even when we're mad or confused by them, because there's other shit to deal with and no time for grudges and meticulous processing.

I have three best friends, and something I realized about this person (and to a different, more contained extent with the other two) is that I envision that nearing the level of platonic life partner. Whereas I think she only sees it as someone who is available to hold her when she's triggered. If, over time, her life leads to fewer triggers (and I'm so grateful this seems to be the case), I don't think she knows how to make space otherwise. I've never met her kids. I've never met her husband. We've never carpooled. To the best of my knowledge, she never knew I was in, nor now out, of love with her.

We just don't process the same way. Our ideals look very different. And in the trenches of 2024, she's not someone I'm going to be able to entrust in my vulnerable moments.

So I'm going to de-escalate, like I should have done last year. I don't know if I'll say anything or just stop trying (which is more cruel?), but I do know that I'm very content with the draw on my other close friendships and I don't feel like it would be appropriate or wise to try to shift the emotional load I used to save for her onto others. So I'm in the market for new friends, especially a new bestie. I even set up a profile on Bumble's friend app, 'cause why not?

Current Mood: forlorn
Current Location: waiting for Kiddo to go back to bed

So my best friend and I worked through our communication breakdown a week or two ago, but in the process something subtle shifted. I realized an aspect of her personality that is deeply held (and deeply protected) wherein she must keep her life hyper-compartmentalized. It appears that despite a handful of intimations otherwise, she has no intentions of ever introducing me to her family and that the only friends she does this with at all are a) parents of similarly-aged children who can play with her kids and b) not very close to begin with.

Once the emotional logjam was clear, I realized that I was no longer looking at her romantically. Maybe it's the heartaches of the past or the self-awareness of the present, but I'm just not capable of holding a flame for anyone who thinks the best way to be yourself is to keep every component of your life separate. I'm not sure I'm capable of being romantically interested in anyone who desires to keep things from me at all. (Note: this is not the same thing as something not coming up yet, or even, "I have a trauma and I'm not ready to discuss it but if we are close I will acknowledge it's there".)

(I can't know for certain, but without any shared closure from K back in the day, I have assumed her little corner of darkness -- which she acknowledged but explicitly said I'd never know -- festered after ten years unspoken.)

Hopefully this clearer boundary makes me a better friend to my current best friend, though as my hypomania has waned I've just been drained and a little awkward.

Oh yeah, and I learned a new word: lithromantic or akoiromantic or apromantic: to be attracted to someone emotionally without the desire or need for it to be reciprocated. Now I can't imagine not WANTING reciprocation, but I'd like to think I've gotten halfway decent at not NEEDING it. I think my friend N, who moved out of state last year, really helped me complete that journey. She was undergoing major illness and surgery and I felt like I needed to out those feelings before something happened to her, but my partner reminded me that she had a partner showing up for her and that making my feelings her problem would not be what she wanted in that time. I slipped and told her a couple years later, but she's been a good sport about it and it was way more casual than, "You might die next week, let me unburden my feels." Actually, I attended her wedding this summer and it was a joyous occasion -- other than the hail. But that's another story.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: 100 gecs (recommended by someone on Feeld)

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Gender Jumper

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