emberleo | Loose ends and burning bridges (Reply)

For years I've had nightmares about being on a bridge as it breaks, or is flooded, or just goes somewhere I don't want to go. I have no idea if that's at all related to my current emotional dilemma.

Life is going quite well for me, overall. I'm happy with what I'm doing, the relationships I do have time for are working quite well. I have a sense of clarity about where I'm going in many ways. I feel like I've come through a year of tremendous change much improved, and am still making progress, though at less of a breakneck speed.

I've made a lot of deliberate changes, and been shoved through quite a few more, picking up some new things and letting go of a LOT of old things. I know I still have a fair few loose ends to tie up, some debts to resolve, some tasks left undone, sure, but overall I feel very strongly I'm on the right path. I'm trying to be as responsible as I can about not making new promises, keeping as many as I can remember, or clarifying at least what is within my ability, and tying up the loose ends of responsibilities I can or should no longer uphold. I'm trying very, very hard not to burn any bridges in this process, just to cross them with care and keep moving forward.

Unfortunately, my anxiety disorder makes it very hard to tell whether I'm actually torching everything behind me all willy-nilly or not, and I frequently find myself sinking into a feeling that everybody I don't have enough time or energy for anymore must be angry with me, or otherwise very unhappy, because I have failed to be enough to go around. I fear that some of them are thinking "After all we've done for her, she just disappears when we need her? Harumph, what a horrible friend she turned out to be!"

I'm sure, intellectually, that any one of them, even if they say they miss me, would disagree with that statement, but that doesn't stop me from worrying about it. I've had too many people with abandonment issues move through my life, I suppose, and I'm too deeply convinced of my own incompetence and irresponsibility.

So lately I find myself wanting to make a list of all of the individuals I feel guilty for not seeing (and in most cases helping) more often. I'm not sure why I think that will help me. What am I going to do? Manufacture more time and energy for them? Send them email telling them I love them dearly, but have no spoons for them right now, as if they didn't know? Maybe I'm hoping I'll realize it's a short list, and I can actually just go through and make time to see each of them over the next howevermany weeks, to at least say "Yes, I still love you, but my life is changing and I can't keep being as close as we once were" - again, as if they didn't know? I still feel guilty that I don't have more time for my childhood best friend, who I haven't seen on a frequent basis since we were both in highschool, for fuck's sake, and it's not like she hasn't moved on with her life and gotten used to my non-ubiquity or lack of helpfulness long since.

I've tried, with some of them, to explain how I feel about it, about them. Mostly I get that it's fine, and people miss me, but everyone understands. Sometimes I get that I haven't actually conveyed what I was trying to convey. Once or twice I've gotten that they don't have the bandwidth to address me. Overall I feel like I'm making my problems theirs in the process of trying to resolve any problems either of us may have with the recent changes in my life.

Maybe it's just to get the reality check from each of them, for however long it may last, that no, none of them are righteously pissed at me?

What if some of them ARE?

This whole thing feels so stupid, but I can't seem to get any gauge of where to draw the reality line internally on it.

-E-