The reason I've been gone

TL;DR: I tried to get contact back from someone who was really important to me a decade ago. Things seemed to go well at first, but broken promises and sad moments made me extremely anxious, to the point where I would mentally treat my surroundings very bad, especially Alba, who has always been an angel to me and I treated like crap. On April 16th this person and I parted ways on bad terms, and I’m still recovering. I feel better now, so I should be back on streaming on April 30th!

(I didn’t proof read this. I’m tired and I personally don’t love talking about this, so I wanted to get it off my chest and that’s about it. I’d gladly talk about it on stream, though).

Hey,

I wanted to explain what happened these couple of weeks since the beginning, but I felt very much out of energy to do so. Now that’s different: I have recovered quite a bit and I find it easier to tell you people.

So this is about a friend of mine who I had issues with many years ago. Before we go any further, I need to tell you that I will not be sharing her name in this (her pronouns, she/her, are basically unavoidable to share since, as you will find, it is quite obvious we are talking about a girl. If I were to hide that fact I’d also hide critical information, which is not my goal). In order to be fluent and natural with this, we’ll call her Nalah, which is, again, not her real name.

I’ve known this person for almost two decades now. For more than half my life. Back in the day, when I was from 12 to around 16, I had a huge crush on her, one that was difficult to cope or even live with. I was quite obsessed and she didn’t really show any interest. It goes without saying that this is not her fault whatsoever—we obviously cannot control the way we feel (but can control the way we express these feelings, though. Something that, as you will find later, was not achieved very well). Throughout this text you will see that I emphasize that blaming any party is very much useless. I don’t think this is about pointing guilty or anything like that at all—we are all humans and always try our best in every scenario, even when there is no energy to do so or even motivation.

Due to this crush I mentioned earlier, I decided to part ways with Nalah, despite her being my best friend and her considering me someone very valuable. This, by the way, is something that I literally found out months ago. You see how this was an odd relationship, and I believe this is mostly due to the fact that we didn’t really share our thoughts. We kind of just let the days go by, and good days were good days, while bad days were bad days. An important lesson to be had: try your best to create a safe space with the people you love, let it be friends, partners or family members, where you can share the way you feel without being judged. Back to topic, though. Again, I basically disappeared from Nalah’s life since I was feeling so hurt from my own self. She tried to approach me a couple times: she’d call me whenever she went to a concert and heard a song that reminded her of me, and we also went to a gig together. But I was so hurt that I couldn’t even see her intentions to approach me again. This is also because I’ve always been very oblivious; I’ve always been a videogame kid but very little social life, so catching signals has never been my forté, so to speak. Because of this, I never really showed interest, and I simply left our friendship for good, without giving any good reason for it.

I regret this. I regret going without informing of anything. It wasn’t Nalah’s fault that I couldn’t get a hold of my feelings. She was also going through eating disorders, and I didn’t even notice. It is true that she also didn’t tell me about it, but it doesn’t hurt to ask “how are you feeling?”. We all live our own battle inside of us, and making these questions only helps us keep going.
And so, I left. After that one last concert, I left, and my intention was to never come back, since that relationship ended up doing nothing but bad for me. In the beginning there were really happy moments, memories that we both treasure. I know she does, she knows I do. But it is extremely important to prioritize your own mental health and wellbeing, and the best I could do at that time was just disappearing. Again, I wouldn’t do this again: while it is true that you come first In your own life, you should seek to never hurt anyone in whatever best way you can. Do whatever you want them to do for you, because they are as deserving as you are.

Fast forward twelve years later, September 17th, 2024. I was browsing through my mail and I saw some of Nalah’s moments that I lived with her. It made me feel nostalgic, and I did keep her phone, so I sent her a text. At first it was really, really exciting. She was extremely happy to talk again, and so was I. It was electric, and I was very hopeful that we could relive those good memories from the past, but since we grew so much, we’d know how to treat each other better.

That was naïve, arrogant, stupid, and sadly hopeless.

People don’t change with time. If anything, time will change people. Only those who look for self-improvement will become better. I wanted to improve throughout the years, and I thought I did. That, again, was arrogant. Turns out traumas leave a huge dent in your mind, and this was, by all means, no exception.

The anxiety came back once she wouldn’t answer for days. Whether because she was busy, sick, or whatever the cause was. I really, REALLY wanted to do things better, to prove that I changed. Notice how this is very quickly going from willing to heal a relationship to proving something for my own sake. This is becoming very selfish. I want to share my story, I want to show this, that, whatever. Is there space for two when I can only think of myself?

The anxiety made me treat my surroundings very poorly. I treated Alba like shit, I truly did. I even told her that I never loved her, because I was so damn confused due to my mental state. Of course I’ve loved her, and of course I love her now, and of course I want to love her forever. Why was my mind telling me otherwise? Because I was very quickly becoming a narcissist. Trust me when I saw it hurts my soul to say this, but I was so fixated in myself due to this that I stopped caring about anyone else but me and this relationship with Nalah that, deep inside, I knew was going to fail.

The patience that Alba has had for me these months is absurdly immense. I can’t imagine going through what she went, what kind of hell it is to be in a ten-year relationship with someone and hear the words “I don’t think I’ve ever loved you”. That I will never forgive myself.
As I said earlier, Nalah was also very excited for this. She told me to go on Discord calls, even invited me to events that she knew I’d enjoy, or showed lots of interest for my job, my hobbies, and even myself. You have to understand me: I had never felt this way before with her. It was very relieving, I was telling myself that those traumas would finally go away.

Only for those Discord calls to never happen. Five times she invited me to one, zero happened. Five times she also told me to meet, none happened. That event I mentioned? It even had dates. You had to assign yourself for it. It was organized, with dates, names, etcetera. I showed her that I was excited with pictures, audio messages where I could show my actual excitement, since text messages feel sometimes empty. I did my BEST to show my true colors. Were they listened? I couldn’t tell you. We never assisted to that event. It was going to last for around a month, and I find suspicious that the final day, the most important day for it, she was on a vacation with her partner. Almost like she never planned to assist it.

So why did she do it? Couldn’t tell ya. To this day I don’t know. I felt played over a decade ago, when we used to be friends. I felt that way plenty of times. It became a huge trauma, as I mentioned earlier. This didn’t help; this made this trauma way bigger.

And this made me treat Alba poorly. I know I said this earlier, but I can guarantee you this is what hurts the most about this story. I was becoming a narcissist that would hate himself. I lost around 45 pounds out of self-hatred: I hated my body,  I blamed it in the past for the lack of interest that anyone would feel towards me. This is a feeling that came back. I would say this is one of the best things that came out of this situation, though: at least I like myself a little more now.

Now you know the story, but you don’t know the ending. And this happened on April 16th, 2024.

The 5th time she told me to meet was the one that I truly believed would happen. We had an argument last month, and she told me she wanted to solve things by seeing each other. I must admit that that conversation had a plethora of red flags. Mostly hers, but I did show mine too, for which I apologized. But I was blind, and waited for that day with brutal anxiety in case it didn’t happen. I made a tweet where I called myself, jokingly, “elegant gamer”. That was the outfit I planned on wearing that day, with an Avenged Sevenfold tie that I had custom made for me. It holds a special feeling, because that was our first concert together, and I thought it’d bring a smile to her face. I also prepared two roses from Alba’s mom’s garden, the two most beautiful flowers I have ever laid eyes on. One for her, and the other one for her mom.

But she never showed up. She told me she was sick that very morning, and that we’d never see each other that day. I called bullshit. Honestly, if someone can’t show up for TEN different occasions and they sound like excuses, chances are they don’t want to see you at all, but they just delay the date so you don’t feel bad. So I decided to, once again, cut the friendship and part ways. She accepted, politely. She said she was sorry, and I obviously didn’t believe it. But I wanted to make things right, say farewell, and that is all.

But something hurt me the most that day. We planned on getting bubble tea that day, to a place where she only goes with people who are special with. That day, at 2 AM, she posted a picture on Instagram of her in that place. I was FUMING. I felt completely betrayed. And so I told her. She got very mad at me, and told me that that picture was from five days ago. It takes some nerve posting that picture that very day, even if it was five days ago. Doesn’t that sound insulting to you? It did to me. It broke my soul in half.
And so, she blocked me. Only from WhatsApp, I could contact her on Instagram. I wanted to end everything, but not in that way. She told me she needs time to think stuff. And I just don’t care anymore.

So that’s the story. Sorry, this is a really long text. Also, Nalah, if you are reading this: obviously you know who you are. And despite everything that’s been done wrong, from both you and me, I know you tried your best. And I could tell. I don’t mean to blame you, that’s not the way I work and it doesn’t sit well with me. I just wish we did things better. We’ll see each other in memories.
See you tomorrow, friends. April 30th means I come back to where I belong: streaming for your ugly faces.