i’ve always been someone who needs to be someone to other people, you know? having lots of friends who depend on and trust me has been the thing that keeps me going and makes me appreciate myself and my life. i don’t know when exactly i ran out of energy to spend on other people. why did that happen? at some point i became insanely apathetic. i had no energy to try and take care of everyone anymore. i lost my purpose, my calling in life and people got mad at me for not caring enough. why did i become such a bad friend? now i’m background noise to all the people i used to mean something to. i just exist. i’m a memory, i’m someone you pass by in the hallway sometimes but never make eye contact with. there’s only one person left. he is everything. things aren’t getting better, i’m still really detached and numb. i don’t think i can be good enough for him much longer.
i’m really tired. when i eventually lose the one thing i have left i won’t waste any more energy trying to keep going. the end is coming closer. i don’t know what to do.
4 comments
You can change things. You can start caring about yourself and start caring about others too.
You can find a purpose for yourself here on earth to make you feel alive and important again.
You can.
If your older friends are gone you can make new friends. If the love of your life is gone you can find a new one. If the goals you set before in life you have achieved already then you can move on to new goals. If you didnt reach the goals you set before then you can work at getting there.
Its not over for you at all
It never too late to change things.
Sometimes we need to take a break. Burnout is real. Caring for other people without caring for yourself can and ill lead to a break down sooner or later and it may make you apathetic or cranky or mean or cruel or any number of things but the trick is recognizing when you’re starting to get into a funk. People forgive eventually and even if they don’t the beautiful thing is that when you make a new friend you have a chance to start over, to begin anew and be the person that you want to be.
Caring and being present is ridiculously exhausting. just remember to give yourself some space. and know that it’s ok to tell folks “right now I don’t have the capacity to care for you the way I want to. I’m sorry and please know that I do love you” (although I also don’t wanna put words in your mouth and please let me know if I’m completely off the mark)
Spines,
Speaking from experience, I can tell you that it is very easy to slip past the line of caring TOO much about others and not enough about yourself. Sometimes we just have to be a little selfish in order to retain our sanity and there is nothing wrong with that. As Overcomer72 said, you can care about yourself while caring about others as well.
L4Y
(L4Y@cogeco.ca)
I too fell into the role of caring too much about friends and family. My self worth was tied to how well I can help people. I therefore attracted a lot of needy people as my “friends” (my family are also very needy people) so when I fell on hard times, they were not there for me and I felt I was like what you said, noise in the background. To make it worse, i felt like a failure, a nothing because I no longer was able to help people like I could in the past. It was with a help of a therapist that I had to learn how to restructure my self worth, learn to seek out people who would be willing to help me out as much as i can help them out. I’ve got other problems but I no longer get my self worth from being there for everyone. You sound like a truly caring person and a wonderful friend. Its hard to find that in other people but they are out there. I found a couple.