TellEmYouKnowMe :
Number 4 hit way too close to home. I don’t have it in me not to help everyone I can whenever I am able to. At 46 years old I have rarely ever needed help, and the few times I did it was because I needed to open up emotionally because things just got too heavy to keep carrying inside. My best friend of 30 years made it about her and told me why the very minor things she was dealing with were more important like it was a competition. That was 4 months ago, and I haven’t talked to her since and never will. Another time I was married. Had been working 60+ hours a week, sometimes going as long as 5 months without a single day off to support my family and put my then wife through college. I still came home and cooked dinner and did the dishes every night. After 15 years it got to be too much. I asked her to get at least a part time job so I could scale back to a normal workload. She cried to her dad about it, because she would rather do nothing but perpetually collect degrees to not use, and he called me and asked me why I couldn’t man up and get a second job. I divorced her instead. More recently I fell I love with a really good friend, hands down the most amazing person I have ever known. I didn’t want to tell her and risk losing what we have, but I didn’t want to spend eternity wondering either. So I confided in a mutual friend about it, we talked, and I ultimately decided that I am already so happy with where we are that I have no reason to pursue more when I don’t know if that is what she wants. That was Saturday last week, and I haven’t heard from either of them ever since. The pain is real, and people think just because I’m a man and live to make people laugh, that I can’t possibly have emotional pain. But it’s real. She was the only person in my life that allowed me to show her my full self. The funny, the serious, the sentimental/emotional, and now I feel completely alone as a result of my own vulnerability. And I don’t even know why the silence is there. It makes me feel like I never should have opened up. If I’m alone and lonely, it sucks, but at least I can learn to live with that. At least I know I will never hurt me. But I miss her terribly every day.
2026-05-04 02:41:42