[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Z

It gets me down sometimes, I think I spoke about it on here a few months ago. He was one of my best friends I'd made at uni and just over the last two years he's gone from being somebody that I would talk to every day and confide my every problem to, to being a near stranger. I don't like him any less than I did before, there was no argument or change of interests or anything, I put it entirely down to him becoming friends with people who have it out for me and turning him against me and now it's gotten to a point where there's no going back. Avoiding someone for a little while can be remedied but at this stage it's become a joke; he says he's too busy or skint to hang out and then I'll bump into him on a night out that same day... or he'll say he's got so much to do but then if a mutual friend's organising something he'll be there... makes me wonder what on earth I could have done to cause such a situation and then I think, no, I haven't done anything wrong, and what do I care anyway? You can't make someone like you if they don't want to. So this (friend)ship has been set adrift and it's probably the most sensible thing to do, to not look back and try and get it back to where it was. You don't want someone as a friend if they don't want you as one.

Originally Posted by Z

I dunno, I've drifted apart from people before and it's never been an issue because these things happen and you're both off doing something new and exciting and you can always reach out to them for a catch up every once in a while or at the worst you don't feel like you can talk to them but you know that you mutually wish each other well... in this case it feels more like he does have a problem with me, or did, and it led to him avoiding me for a long time so then I stopped bothering and he eventually realised that he'd driven me away and now he doesn't know how to reconnect and even when I try and reach out, he then reverts back to avoiding me. I just don't even know how to explain it properly, that's why I did it through a poem

...hmmm, you've kind of really figured it out yourself haven't you...sometimes you do have to 'send people adrift'...that's a good way of putting it...(I think) really that he can't help who he is anymore than you can help who you are and how you both react to things and how your whole thought processes and emotions work..it would be so easy to use expressions like 'that makes you the better person..' but it just makes you different people and I imagine that you don't feel like 'the better person' because what you feel is the person who 'feels' these things more, who feels hurt by them etc so that doesn't make you feel 'better' at all...

..it's something I think about a lot as well, I have to 'ration' things and find reasons for them and find reasons why people act how they do and maybe 'judge' you and those judgements may be purely on what other people think and people are 'influenced'..but what does that mean though, why do they do that..you don't understand that because it's not something that you would do/it's not how your thoughts and emotions work so it's hard to understand...but maybe they don't have the same belief in themselves as you do and maybe they 'need' that group of people who are against you..?..maybe they don't have the abilities/capabilities to try to maintain both friendships because if you're 'going against a group' you want to be part of then that would mean self belief and 'strength' you know..?...but they can't help that either, they can't help that they haven't got those 'skills' anymore than you have them, you could do that, you could maintain both friendships if you liked everyone and you could refrain from 'judging' based on other people say..that's just your 'set of skills', not that they always make you feel better, do they because this whole thing and your thought processes/giving all of this emotional energy to it has made you feel pretty rubbish at times as well...anyway, that's why in a way it's hard to say 'you're the better person' because then you're just judging him like he's judged you..you're judging him for 'being him' and being him, which he can't help has ruled his actions and caused you hurt...anyway I'm rambling and do, like you over-think things/complicate them and find it hard just to think..oh that person is just a bit of a rubbish person..I have to try to understand them.....a curse really....anyway his lack of belief in himself has caused this awkwardness that's now hard to erase/to 'bridge' and that's beyond your control because you've tried and he doesn't know how to 'accept the hand' you've offered him..and that again is the 'difference' in you both because you would..?.but no 'better' or 'worse' a person, just a different person..I suspect that if at some time in the future, he does come to have regrets and wants to act on them and approach you, you will accept his friendship on maybe a lesser trusting basis and not the same but you'll still accept it because those are your 'skills' but in the reverse situation, he probably wouldn't be able to do that..?..'emotional skills' and capabilities are no different to physical ones, we can't make ourselves have them, we can't change who we are all we can do is to try to understand ourselves and our thought processes and that kind of helps in not letting this effect us so deeply/sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and we spend hours 'agonising' anyway, that's something I learned from CBT...

..anyway, just for now and probably typically you, you've taken something which is a negative in your life in how he's made you feel and you've created a poem, which is lovely btw...and it's making a 'positive' out of it which is all you can do...I write to 'put things in boxes in my head' as well...it helps me, they don't always stay in those boxes but well, that's all you can do for now and you've done it...you know who you are, you know you did nothing wrong and yet you've been 'judged' anyway..well so be it, the greatest 'loss' here is not yours, it's his and the people who have judged you and that's just kind of life and the different people you meet along the way..some you keep for a short while, some you keep forever and some you just 'set adrift' because 'adrift' is what they have chosen in their lack od self belief so they really set themselves 'adrift'....