My Role in the Cull of Connections
In case you missed it, check out part 1 of this article: The Inevitable Cull of Connections.
It would be erroneous and a fallacy to say that the blame for the breakdown in the relationships around the time of the diagnosis lay entirely on my friends and family.
For a long time, this was the narrative I told myself. I duped myself into believing that it was the people around me who had proved to be disloyal, vacuous, and undependable.
Understanding my part
I, myself must take a proportional portion of the blame too. Like a wounded animal, laying by the roadside ... shocked, vulnerable, and jaded ... I pushed everyone away. Shut everyone out.
As I struggled to process and compute the enormity of the change that had been foisted on me, I could not muster the strength to engage and communicate my needs or feelings with those nearest and dearest to me.
So, I froze them out. It felt easier at the time. It felt like the only logical and sensible choice.
I didn't want an audience
There were multifarious reasons for this deliberate, destructive, and ultimately detrimental freezing of social ties. But the principal justification for my behavior was because I did not want the people closest to me to witness my pain.
I did not want them to have a closeup, front-row seat to my demise and loss of my former self. I was broken, yet I did not want to give them a magnifying glass to analyze and judge my brokenness.
The indignity of this was more than I could accept. I did not appreciate the idea of having an audience for my suffering. So, I purposely retreated. Withdrew all contact. Severed all meaningful contact.
Self-preservation
As a protection mechanism, I shut them out, thus saving myself the (inevitable) heartache that would later ensue when they would choose to withdraw from me.
I never gave them the benefit of the doubt ... maybe, just maybe many of them would have stayed in my life if I had given them the chance.
Perhaps they would have flourished at offering me support during my darker times. Maybe they wanted to be wanted. But I never afforded them such a luxury, and for this I am sorry.
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