ENTRY 01: 08/20/2023 - Friendship And Trust Through The Web

I’ve been coming back to the concept of friendship more and more, lately. I’m blessed with a somewhat large group of what I consider tightly-knit pals on the internet, cool peeps all. Each of the people I’ve come to know over the course of the past few years through the online community I frequent, those that have stuck around and become a constant fixture in my online life, are genuinely an inspiration to me, and I feel privileged to know and have known them. In my darker moments, they’ve given me a lot of hope, whether or not they knew it.

Recently, though, those feelings have turned a little dark around the edges. I’ve not forged many truly deep friendships in my daily, offline life, besides ties with my immediate family, another source of strong support I’m incredibly grateful for. As a result, the sort of long, complex, and ultimately adult friendships that I’m seeking are… I think the phrase is “a new concept”, but I’m not too sure that conveys the full scope of it. Either way, I’ve found myself struggling with navigating some aspects of the thing.

I think the crux of the confusion is ultimately internal, I’ve already picked up the lesson that I should trust my friends and confide in them as freely as I feel the need to, and to be a source of support for them when they need it. That’s just it, though: I often find myself afraid to speak on personal matters with them, and utterly confused when it comes to exactly how to correctly offer support, especially in delicate, emotional situations.

The former issue is, as I said, almost certainly an internal problem I’ve yet to fully figure out how to fix. My friends rule, and I’ve put my trust in them regarding deep, even private personal things, and been rewarded with trust in return, and a sense of belonging, among other things. In particular, the thing that’s struck me the most is the sense of being among “my people”, and the affirmation that, while I might be strange and a bit of a freak, I’m not broken or lesser as a result, and that others like me exist out there. It gives me hope for the future, in a strange way I haven’t fully put into words yet.

Why, then, do I find myself LESS inclined to speak freely with them? It’s immensely frustrating, to find a sense of connection in others only to consistently deny yourself more than a few drops of it at a time. Intellectually, I’m already at the point where I should be past this, but emotionally it feels like I’m actually losing progress I’ve made over the years, and that emotional aspect has me acting contrary to my goals, to repay the goodness they’ve shown me with more goodness. I hate it.

The latter issue, of not being well-equipped for what seem to be essential tasks within a proper friendship, is another problem. For those unaware, I’m autistic, which naturally causes me some difficulty in complex social situations. More importantly for the scope of this ramble, however, is my inexperience. I feel more and more every day like I can cover for most issues by explaining myself as much as possible and asking for clarification when I need it, but when it comes to a more dire emotional situation my friend may be going through, I start to reach the bottom of my metaphorical toolbox, as it were.

I think this manifests most glaringly in the area of emotional support. My best tool when it comes to that usually involves drawing connections to my own past experience, and using that as a source of solidarity and understanding with the other person, making them feel seen and understood, and being there to get through the thing together. This works well in some situations, but if I lack the common experience with the other person, then it quickly ceases to be useful. At that point, my options feel very limited.

My first instinct, then, is to search for practical solutions for whatever they’re currently suffering from. This has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it seems, to me, anyway, the quickest and most efficient path to extracting my friend from the bad situation they’re in, which is what I want most. The goal is to get my friend to be as safe and happy as possible, no? This has its issues, though. For one thing, not all situations have a quick and easy practical solution or path of escape. Naturally this limits this approach’s utility in such situations, but more importantly I have no way of knowing whether my friend is seeking practical solutions in the first place. Many people in tough emotional times simply want to be listened to and validated, to be given a moment of calm where they can vent and feel grounded relative to their current emotional state.

Now, this presents a few challenges for me with regards to my social skills as someone with autism. As I mentioned, I am entirely unable to tell whether they’re seeking solutions or a safe space when entering the interaction. In some instances, I can simply ask which it is they’re looking for, and, knowing the people I hang around, I’m very likely to get a straight answer I can act accordingly with. Some situations are more dire, though. Unfortunately, many of my closest friends suffer from mental health conditions, an abusive living environment, or, sadly, both. In their case, when their situations become too much to bear, I feel woefully underequipped to help them.

I’m aware that I’m perhaps placing the weight of their worlds on my shoulders a bit here, but I want most for my friends to be safe and happy. It’s natural that I’d get invested in their situations to the extent that I do, or at least I think it is. As such, when the stakes get particularly high, I get a little paralyzed. What I say and do can impact what they do next, and the last thing I want is for them to harm themselves or think of themselves as lesser due to an incorrectly phrased thing I say, or, gods forbid, to think of me as someone who isn’t safe to come to for emotional support.

In spite of my fear of saying the wrong thing and hurting them without intending to, I’ve tried my best to put in the effort to try and be there for them anyway. Remaining paralyzed and saying nothing is far worse than trying to offer help and being rejected, in my eyes. So, I’ve done the time-honored autistic activity of Googling different things I should be saying and focusing on in such and such social situations, in this case, when the obligation to be emotionally supportive comes my way. It feels a little silly and perhaps childish, but if I want to support my friends I need to actually do some of the homework. Or at least, that’s how I look at it.

I think the main thing I need to learn is to reject the fear that I feel as a knee-jerk reaction. It stems mostly from distrust of myself, and largely has the effect of causing me to alienate myself from my friends, which is the opposite of the goal. Doing emotionally supportive things on a more routine basis is helping to make it more comfortable, as I get more and more used to doing so, but I don’t know that I’m doing enough, exactly.

But I digress. Another issue with the “practical solutions” approach is my physical distance from my friends. I know them all through online communities, and so they live in various disparate places, not all of which I am privy to the knowledge of. Most live in North America, true, but none live near me. This, combined with my inexperience and shyness with regards to certain things dealing with money and the internet, limits my ability to directly affect their situation outside of talking to them.

Aaaaalllll of this stuff that I’ve detailed above has led me recently to oscillate between two states of mind: that I dearly love my friends whom I am super grateful for and inspired by, and an all-encompassing malaise born of a feeling of powerlessness to really help my friends in (seemingly) any meaningful way. Said malaise is exactly what spurred the creation of the post you’re reading right now! Isn’t that something? By the way, if you’re a member of the Based Ones reading this right now, you, yes YOU are an inspiration and I love you. No backsies, it’s simply the truth, I don’t make the rules.

Anyway, “woe is me i wish my friends were happy and safe all of the time forever” aside, I mainly wrote this to try and collect my thoughts, and maybe process some of this in a healthy way outside of bottling it up like I have been. I’m not exactly sure what the right way to broach this subject is within a friend group, especially in the midst of other people’s life turmoils which are more dire than mine. It would feel gross to rant about this stuff when some of my friends are being treated for mental illness, processing childhood trauma, or still on the run from abusive parents (or worse, still stuck in a house with them).

I still hold out hope that I’ll eventually make sense of things like this one day. It’s just a matter of time and experience, right?

I just hope all my friends will still be standing beside me when I get there, or, failing that, are alive, safe, and happy somewhere with people who love them.