How to stop hiding.

I am terrible friend.

You’ll love me when we meet at that party.  We will have the best conversation on that trip with mutual friends.  We will have the best conversation in the comments section of a blog post.  Then I disappear.  You’ll call and I won’t answer, the same with that text you send.

I might like your facebook post or comment that I miss you but I am ultimately going to bail.

You’ll think it’s something you did or said or that I think I’m too good for you or that you’re not worth my time…I’ve heard them all.

You’ll be wrong.

I hide.

I hide from people, change, opportunity, disaster, love…I could go on and on.

I get in my bed and binge watch everything away, or sleep.

I’m choosing to talk about this because it’s a huge problem in my life and I bet I’m not alone.

I’ve pushed just about every single person out of my life.

I see where it might be considered rude or snooty or any number of things but what it is really:  I’m terrified that you’ll figure out that I’m a monster of a human being and hate me so I’ll push you away first.

It’s such a problem that at this point I don’t even know how to be a friend because it’s been so long since I’ve had one.

My mom used to dote on my little sister.  I was just inconvenient for her or it felt that way. She worked a lot, she was gone a lot and her attention wasn’t something that was easily given, when she got home after dinner she’d read my sister a book and comb her hair.  Anything I said was met with anger.  No book.  No brush.  Nothing else.  Repeat.

I started taking her things–not all her things…like a blouse to wear, or a necklace.  I’d always return them, I’d put them back before she got home but there were times that I didn’t make it in time.

I’m not going to excuse the behavior.  It feels wrong even trying to justify it.  Just know that I’m not a thief now and I feel bad for doing it.

I was doing it because I missed my mother’s attention and her yelling at me-even though it was negative-was still her paying attention to me.

She decided that I was a liar and a thief and irredeemable and that’s how it stood for the rest of the time I lived at home.

She used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people and that it was impossible to be both and that I was just a bad person.  No redemption, no making it up to her, no amount of i’m sorry–just a 10 year old that was suddenly stamped ‘bad’ and no longer trusted again, no longer favored again, no longer mattered again.

Then I moved out and she didn’t see me anymore, eventually she realized that she’d discarded and destroyed her child and tried very hard to build a relationship with me.

I let her because I am not a bad person.

The thing is that the lesson I learned from that experience has stuck to me like my own skin and I’ve worn it every single day since.  I wear the skin of a terrible person, a fundamentally bad person, a liar, a thief who doesn’t deserve anyone in her life.

My mom’s dead now and honestly I feel bad blaming her.

I have felt bad almost my entire life because of this.

I have to figure out a way to let this go.  I deserve friends.  The only way to be happy in life is to have friends. I have other problems but by far this is the biggest issues I have. This one is ruining my life.

Do you have any idea how to get past a pattern of hiding from people, things, challenges…???? I’d love to hear yours.  I do.  I have a great plan that I sought help for.  Keep reading!

First there’s admitting it.  My life has gotten there because of choices I’ve made.  Not blaming myself, just accepting that maybe I could learn how to instead of just feeling this way and never say anything…I could speak up in the future.  ‘HEY MOM, I feel like you don’t love me and that you don’t have any time for me’.  I wish I could’ve just gone back in time and screamed that at the top of my lungs.

We all carry baggage, we all have people and experiences that were brought into our lives just to teach us something–it’s just some of those lessons went unlearned.  Going back, learning the lesson and then putting it into use going forward is something that is worth more than gold.

So you’ve admitted it.  That’s a huge step.  Way to go!

The next thing is a little tougher but you got it.  Trust me.  See somewhere along the line you lost faith in yourself.  You either got hurt by someone telling you or making you feel like you weren’t worthy of their time or attention or worse.  You got so hurt that you started pushing people away and then the most cruel thing happened.  People started blaming you for it.  See they couldn’t tell that you were doing it because of your past hurt, to them it just looked like you were being a jerk.  In your mind, you pushed them away because they (they is a term that you use to identify any outsiders) all have the potential to hurt you in the very same way as your initial hurt.

Your only mechanism of defense is to push them away, what other option do you have to keep yourself safe and never feel that way again?  Your pushing them away hurt them and they judged you and then you started not only having to relive that initial pain but then piling on newer things that were also super painful like ‘They’re better off without me’, ‘I deserve their anger or hatred for my pushing them away’, ‘I’m not worth their time/attention’.

You’ve lost the faith in yourself that you’re capable of being a friend.

Eventually you give up even talking to people for fear of having to feel bad for letting them down.

Stopping this isn’t that hard.   See this is a thought spiral.  You think you’re smart, and yeah you’re smart but you’re smart in a way that has trapped you in this logic that isn’t reality.  No one really thinks that much about anyone else.  We are all self centered for the most part.  So ok maybe a few people felt blown off, I guarantee it wasn’t the first time they’d been blown off and definitely it is not the last time they’ll get blown off.  Cut yourself a break.  You are amazing but they’re going to make it trust me.

I am going to tell you a secret that’s about to change your entire perception of the situation.  We ALL feel this way.  We are all scared.  Sure we have moments of bravery where we stick out our hand and try but we all retreat at times too.  We all blow people off.  We all hide.

I can tell you that I’d rather have a friend that’s blown me off walk up to me and just say ‘hey, i’m really sorry for not calling, you’ve been on my mind I just haven’t been brave enough to fess up to being an inconsiderate jerk when I didn’t respond to your text’…I’d hug them round the neck and love them all the more for it because they were being honest.

I know I suck lots of times too.  Why is it so hard to just be the bigger person and admit–hey I made a mistake, I’m sorry.  It isn’t.  This is how you stop hiding.  You admit that no one’s perfect, you’re going to make mistakes and so is everyone else.

You stop hiding by being the friend you can be when you can be and FORGIVING YOURSELF for the times when you can’t be.  When you can’t, you just say you’re sorry.  Friends worth having move on with you, people that don’t aren’t friends.

xoxo,

Juls