- Joined
- Dec 2, 2016
- Messages
- 3,648
- Reason
- DX FIBRO
- Diagnosis
- 00/0000
- Country
- US
I'm going to do something I basically never do...........vent.
I hope you all don't mind.
There's a person I had a friendship with for 25 years. For the past 21 years we've lived in separate states and not seen each other, kept in touch regularly through email and phone calls. The past couple of years, most of our communication has been texts, with occasional phone calls.
What happened is the person started sending me texts late at night. I take medication that helps me sleep, but I am a chronic insomniac and if something wakes me up in the night I often cannot get back to sleep for hours, or at all. As anyone with fibromyalgia knows, if you don't get enough sleep your pain is almost always worse the next day, and of course that's on top of the fatigue and general not-good feeling any one has the day following a very bad night of little to no sleep. Sometimes it can have a ripple effect and negatively affect the next couple of days as well.
I explained all of this very carefully and politely to the person, and asked them never to text me past a certain hour, making sure I took into account the time difference between us of one hour. I explained all of it in a text, so there'd be a record of this they could read again if in doubt about the time. I also explained that I cannot turn the phone off or leave it in another room at night because if there's any kind of emergency at night I need it close to me and available immediately.
Well, they texted me late at night again. And again. And again. And again. Each time they did, I would (politely) ask them again not to, and explain all over again why. Each time they'd say basically " oops, sorry" and I would basically say, OK, please just don't do this again, and let it go. Then a couple months or so would go by and they'd do it again.
Finally, the last time it happened, ( this is the 7th or 8th time since I first explained to them why this is so important to me), I got angry. I sent a text saying that I had already told them over and over why I needed for them not to do that, and that at this point all I can think is that they just don't care enough to bother to remember. It was not nasty...I didn't call any names or say anything bad about the person, just that apparently they didn't care. And their response was to kick our whole relationship -- a 25 year warm and close friendship -- to the curb and say that our communication was finished. I feel as though they threw me out like garbage. This hit me like a kick in the chest. I felt despondent. I texted back to say, basically....why would you do this? You are ending our whole 25 year friendship over this? And all they did was text back to say, "you hurt my feelings". It's actually incomprehensible to me.
I am still upset about it. But I am a person who never wants to be anywhere I am not wanted. That person will never hear from me again. I also am thinking that despite that person having said many times to me that they cared about me, the friendship apparently didn't mean as much to them as it meant to me, because I wouldn't have ever ended it.
I feel very badly treated, and I know I did nothing to deserve such treatment. That person hurt me over and over by waking me up and I always just immediately let it go and went on. To be completely honest, this is not the only thing .....they kept saying something after I told them over and over that it hurt my feelings when they did it.....although they did finally stop doing it (after a few years of being asked). I keep feeling that I do not deserve this. And I also know that I am probably better off without this person in my life. But it's very painful. I have very few people in my life, so each one is important. I have no one with whom I can talk about this, but probably talking about it wouldn't help anyway. Gone is gone. I was already in a pretty bad depression, and this has made it a lot worse. But I will survive.
I guess the only reason I am writing this is to see if anyone here might have words of support for me.
I hope you all don't mind.
There's a person I had a friendship with for 25 years. For the past 21 years we've lived in separate states and not seen each other, kept in touch regularly through email and phone calls. The past couple of years, most of our communication has been texts, with occasional phone calls.
What happened is the person started sending me texts late at night. I take medication that helps me sleep, but I am a chronic insomniac and if something wakes me up in the night I often cannot get back to sleep for hours, or at all. As anyone with fibromyalgia knows, if you don't get enough sleep your pain is almost always worse the next day, and of course that's on top of the fatigue and general not-good feeling any one has the day following a very bad night of little to no sleep. Sometimes it can have a ripple effect and negatively affect the next couple of days as well.
I explained all of this very carefully and politely to the person, and asked them never to text me past a certain hour, making sure I took into account the time difference between us of one hour. I explained all of it in a text, so there'd be a record of this they could read again if in doubt about the time. I also explained that I cannot turn the phone off or leave it in another room at night because if there's any kind of emergency at night I need it close to me and available immediately.
Well, they texted me late at night again. And again. And again. And again. Each time they did, I would (politely) ask them again not to, and explain all over again why. Each time they'd say basically " oops, sorry" and I would basically say, OK, please just don't do this again, and let it go. Then a couple months or so would go by and they'd do it again.
Finally, the last time it happened, ( this is the 7th or 8th time since I first explained to them why this is so important to me), I got angry. I sent a text saying that I had already told them over and over why I needed for them not to do that, and that at this point all I can think is that they just don't care enough to bother to remember. It was not nasty...I didn't call any names or say anything bad about the person, just that apparently they didn't care. And their response was to kick our whole relationship -- a 25 year warm and close friendship -- to the curb and say that our communication was finished. I feel as though they threw me out like garbage. This hit me like a kick in the chest. I felt despondent. I texted back to say, basically....why would you do this? You are ending our whole 25 year friendship over this? And all they did was text back to say, "you hurt my feelings". It's actually incomprehensible to me.
I am still upset about it. But I am a person who never wants to be anywhere I am not wanted. That person will never hear from me again. I also am thinking that despite that person having said many times to me that they cared about me, the friendship apparently didn't mean as much to them as it meant to me, because I wouldn't have ever ended it.
I feel very badly treated, and I know I did nothing to deserve such treatment. That person hurt me over and over by waking me up and I always just immediately let it go and went on. To be completely honest, this is not the only thing .....they kept saying something after I told them over and over that it hurt my feelings when they did it.....although they did finally stop doing it (after a few years of being asked). I keep feeling that I do not deserve this. And I also know that I am probably better off without this person in my life. But it's very painful. I have very few people in my life, so each one is important. I have no one with whom I can talk about this, but probably talking about it wouldn't help anyway. Gone is gone. I was already in a pretty bad depression, and this has made it a lot worse. But I will survive.
I guess the only reason I am writing this is to see if anyone here might have words of support for me.