But we must move away
Posted: 12/08/2025
Another retrospective on the past few weeks.
About a month ago I began to try living life giving myself the benefit of the doubt - telling myself to trust my instincts and follow up on my wills, to do my best to be the one who could give attention to others and not just hope for attention from them. Those few weeks have been some of my happiest because I had been a much more spontaneous and confident person. My flatmates and friends didn't recognise me for my newfound energy, and I began to make new friends and experience new things (and retry old things I stopped doing), trying to move on from obsessions which I really thought were behind me. It felt quite beautiful, though perhaps a bit narcissistic.
But although I had, on the face of it, attempted to move past my inner mistrust of people and tried to display the best parts of myself to others more often, I still had this deep set anxiety that my life, no matter how much I told myself that I had the potential to be a person who people wanted to know, or someone who could be energetic and lively and the centre of things, remained subordinate to other peoples' established groups and friends. That I might only exist in their minds for the period of time that I was present, only to fade away when I had to go home. I don't know how much of that can be true (and I know it is supremely against the point to wonder) but I couldn't feel at ease without the attention, sad to say. Especially from whom I had been unable to get out of my head of for a while.
So this anxiety became all-consuming over time, even as I asked more and more of her attention, happy at what I thought was normalisation from what happened earlier in the year, but still feeling deeply dejected at each point we couldn't contact. Ultimately I was continuing my pattern of obsession (regretful to say, but I think it is the best term to describe it). I thought I had moved past that, but I had not. I foolishly thought it didn't show from me that I felt this way; in reality my desperation was seeping through the walls and out the door. And I thought I could help her with her own anxieties, but in reality I was making it worse, if anything.
It may be odd, even callous, to feel more at peace than anything after she told me the above. Up to that point (and as a result of what caused her to inform me of this) I had become blind in worrying about what she thought of me that I couldn't recognise where I had been overbearing in her attempts to accomodate for me in her life. I was too selfishly thinking of my own want to have her attention that I had no conception of whether she could give more of it, or whether I even deserved it. I treated her too radically different and I was forcing her to do the same with me compared to the rest of her friends.
She asked for the both of us to keep our distance for a while, and I agree; really, I should have treated her normally in the first place, but my anxiety and selfishness made me blind to her thoughts, and having now heard the effects, I feel shame in having been this way to someone I had told myself I held dearly. And I've been unhealthy in treating her and myself this way too.
The question to me is how I move on to make myself better. It is this anxiety in particular and which amplified itself with her that could be something to think about and change. What that change eventually looks like I can't answer today. As for her, I think a lot of time spent not worrying about her is the best thing I can do to myself and my life. It is painful, but I think personal pain is necessary; avoiding it is to disregard the truth, which I feel like is the most valuable thing in the world. And I am glad I that could be told the truth about myself today.
There is also the question of whether I can have a normal friendship with her. It is a little beside the point and too early to say. It will take some time for me to become used to not thinking about her before that can even be considered. Perhaps the fact that it is she who expressed her desire for space and not me will help. Ultimately I believe I can find some sort of common ground with her on how we can remain friends, but I will keep that to the side for now, because the one I have to work on is myself, not her.
In pursuit of being a person truly capable of love,
Benedykt
P.S. If we're ever friends again and you get to read this, please listen to it. One night I was driving in Banks Peninsula and my voice recorder full of music ran out of power so I had to turn on the radio... and this was playing. And I thought it was beautiful.