Not like old times, eh?

I’m in the living room nervously waiting for a call from a old friend.

A catch-up call. We hadn’t spoken in over a year. So we found time in our diaries to talk. This is the kind of friend I’d catch up with once every few years. She’s a good person, recently has become a new mother, a reserved soft-spoken person.

In the past, whenever we’d speak, I would either completely withhold or soften the truth about what I was going through. Because being rejected or being abandoned by people hurt me more than keeping it in.

So I’d say things like, “Yeah, I was struggling during university”. When the truth is, during university, I didn’t want to want to live. I used to think and still think, that if I died tomorrow, no one would care. Not a single person.

But today, for the last nine months, I’ve been going to therapy. And…. I absolutely hate it!
You mean to tell me, that I need to bring up all the pain I buried deep underneath? The stuff that makes me want to kill myself? Bring it all to the surface!

But what I’ve learnt, and am still learning, is that therapy is about realising the truth of what you’ve been through, and being true to those around you.

So in this conversation with her, I was honest.

Instead of saying, “Yeah, I had a challenging upbringing,”

I went for it.

I said: “I was a child of an abusive home. That my mother was the kind of person who wouldn’t take a bullet for her children—she’d save herself. She’d leave them behind. And then somehow make it their fault. Make them feel like they failed to save her.“

The friend grew uncomfortable. The weight of what I was saying was too much. So she pivoted to the kind of questions that seem harmless.
OR so you would think.

She asked, “So, how are your siblings?”

I answered: “I don’t have a great relationship with them. Things are swept under the rug, and we were raised to be against each other. That’s what happens when you grow up in an abusive household.”

The phone call was getting too tense for her.

Then came the topic of my second wedding event – which she attended.

I couldn’t bring myself to say how much it hurt—that people wouldn’t come, because they were in alliance with my parents. And the few who did—the ten people that showed up—it hurt even more how quickly they left. How they disappeared the moment they were done eating. How it all felt like abandonment. I had spent months planning it. Years dreaming it. So much of our money poured into it.

I had this image in my head of being surrounded by people who cared about me. Because that’s all I ever wanted: to be cared for. Build memories that would last a lifetime. And when they left, it showed me something. That I do not matter to people.

But this was far too painful for me to say on the phone without struggling to keep it together.

So instead, I said:
“That entire day I was in survival mode. I still can’t bring myself look at the pictures. It was traumatising—people boycotting us, refusing to come.”

I didn’t mention how people left early. That part stayed hidden. Because I knew it’d directly affect her, I spared her her feelings.

She responded, uncomfortably: “But I had a nice day that day.”

I said: “I’m glad you did. I didn’t. It was supposed to be another wedding day for me. But I’ve learned to pretend so well, you’d never be able to tell.”

The call ended in discomfort. It felt like she was slowly backing away from me—away from the heaviness—until she disappeared into the thin air.
And yeah, I dropped a lot of heavy stuff on her for a catch-up call after a year, for someone I don’t speak to regularly.

And it hurt.
Her reaction hurt me.
It felt like I was being abandoned,
But this time, I was showing up as myself.

And what surprised me,
is that I didn’t sever the relationship.
I didn’t tell her to go fuck herself.
Instead, I talked to my husband about it.
I told him how much it shook me.
And I wrote this post.

And what it made me realise is: I am changing.

I am no longer the person who completely withholds the truth.
And I’m getting less afraid of people leaving because of it.

It’s small, but I am changing…