I’ve always excelled at making friends. I quickly make friends in every social group. Lately, though, I am excelling at losing friends. I rapidly lose friends in every social group. I am so good at losing people I care about that I can’t even keep track of how many people are becoming distant. Thing is, it isn’t totally their fault. An initial wrong action on their part, no matter how insignificant, starts to snowball out of control while my internal anxieties aggressively dramatize it. Their sins will sink into every crevice of my brain, hardening into a shell.  I can’t sprint fast enough to outrun it, can’t seem to bury myself low enough into wet sand to hide from my mind’s unrelenting reminders.  Hanging onto every word people speak, my brain not forgetting a single moment. Breaking apart sentences into mere fragments of evil, everything gets a coating in permanent grime. Like a spider wrapping its prey with layers of smothering silk, any chance of revival is suffocated out of reach. Repeating the crimes of others over and over in my head, clouding my accurate visions of them constantly redeeming themselves.

The plank in my eye is shattered into pieces and ignored, and I unwillingly scrutinize the speck in my increasingly distant companions. Frantically searching for wrongful deeds, an unconsented fear of letting the past naturally drown itself out. Time has not healed all wounds but causes them to fester deep in my friendship’s rotting bones. Moving on proves only to knot my jaws together and causes my tongue to dissolve in its hollow cave, to avoid stirring dormant embers into a roaring fire. I will not provoke, but cannot move past it. My inability to forgive will not forgive me. What would cause it? What damage has been done that has forever blunted my compassion?

In everyone’s head is their own world, a planet to call home, their own universe. Infinite lands to discover and stake claim to. New talents to be unearthed and placed on display. So what about those who have had whole continents destroyed? Internalized nuclear warfare that has left my head with only a few places left to live. They are Polar opposites, too. On one side of the spectrum, take a city that is so busy it makes even the most level-headed individuals believe, even if only for a moment, that burning it all to the ground would be the easiest way to solve everyone’s problems. So many people all crammed together, so many lives all trying to exist around each other. That bringing the skyline level with the earth, mixed into the dirt, would be the only way to calm everything down. The fluorescent lights and the constant rushing, fast walking, time’s running out atmosphere is no place to thrive. But is the alternative any better? A hushed and dusky deserted ghost town. Pools of water stretch out on the street without even a ripple. Seeming as if the earth is no longer spinning, there is no wind left to give the trees personality. Heat is sucked out of the air and leaves the only remaining resident in a vacuum.

Who else lives inside of your head but you? No one, you are there all alone, as I am. Wanting so desperately to escape the city that I have become stuck in the reverse. Resented my family and now he will never see them like I used to ever again. There were always too many things to do and now there are absolutely none. Why would it make me sad? Didn’t I get exactly what I wanted? Torn between the raging city and the bleak desert town. Two polar opposites that desperately need to level out find a middle ground between. The city has too much to offer, the town not enough. Would you rather be overstimulated or empty? So trapped in your surroundings that you can’t even see what is becoming of yourself. You have been turning to dust. Disappearing from everyone you care about. But isn’t that better than being run over by the city? I live in my head, but it is not a home. Either alone or having too many people surrounding, will I ever reach peace?

I am not sure how to end this brutal pattern. Deep-rooted fears and trauma make it impossible to freeze my overthinking. I need a spray of cold water to the face when I start to snowball. My therapist is helping me chip away at the roots, digging up the beginnings of my bad habits. Unsure if I will ever fully unearth it, the slight progress I have made in identifying my faults could be the beginning of a revolution. Probably not.