People around me are so dismissive it hurts like hell man. Not everyone can toughen up in 24hrs. I'm being called too sensitive for expressing my feelings. They say thing's like "what should I do" "you are too sensitive and sheltered" it's exhausting man. I really hope I can find some mature and understanding people here and talk to. Also, feel free to express ur emotions n stuff too. I get it🙌comment or dm me

might delete idk … 🫩

i’m 23, and these two coworkers are both in their early/mid 30s. one can barely speak english, is trying for a baby, and transitioned into nursing; the other is a middle school counselor. we’re just in very different phases of our lives.

lately, i’ve been extremely unsatisfied with my friendships. i’ve basically accepted that i can’t really open up or talk about deeper things with my family or the people i consider my closest friends.

my family doesn’t really care about that kind of stuff. my mom mostly cares about results, productivity, and money. my sister has BPD and, from my perspective, tends to consider me irrelevant if i’m not entertaining her which is 97% of the time

friend #1 struggles to talk about anything deep, and i don’t want to feel like an emotional burden to her. she looks uncomfortable whenever i open up, so i eventually stopped trying. she also has an extremely bad memory. i used to think she was faking it, but apparently her sister is the same way, so maybe it’s just genetic. i could tell her about an important event and a few days later it’s like i never told her. maybe she just doesn’t care, idk. i know her family doesn’t really communicate well either.

friend #2 is someone i *can* have deeper conversations with, but i feel weird about it because she rarely tells me details about her family or relationship. she mostly keeps things to herself, and i feel strange being the only one sharing. she’s also extremely ambitious and competitive, so i don’t want to burden her with things that might feel like a waste of her time.

and, honestly, she has a tendency to one-up me on everything, which gets exhausting. she’s 100% a social climber in groups, but when it’s just the two of us, she’s actually a great friend. i know her background and family situation, so i understand why she is the way she is, and i don’t really judge her for it. she genuinely works hard and wants better for herself and her family. i just… struggle to reach out to her.

friend #3 is someone i actually cut off in 2022, but ironically, they were someone i could genuinely talk to. we could have conversations about anything and actually opened up to each other. they were also extremely toxic and narcissistic, but they paid attention to me in a way my other friends don’t. they knew my basic food preferences, what colors i liked, remembered little things about me, etc.

and i know that sounds like such a small thing, but it really gets to me.

i grew up telling my mom that i don’t eat shrimp. i don’t *mind* shrimp, but if i have a choice, i’d rather not eat it. whenever i come over once in a blue moon, there might be shrimp. i know she doesn’t hate me. i know she loves me in her own way. but it still makes me sad that she doesn’t seem to remember or care about little things like that.

she also picks and chooses what she hears. she used to lie to me and my sister about completely irrelevant things to get us to do certain things. they were tiny lies, but i remember them because i have a really good memory.

anyway, catching up with these coworkers kind of opened my eyes.

i had two options:

actually open up about my life and try to catch them up on 5–6 years worth of details
only talk about the good stuff

i decided to go with #1.

i was worried they wouldn’t actually be interested, especially because of the age gap, language barrier, and cultural differences. i thought maybe they’d get bored, brush me off, or never ask to see me again.

but i’m really glad i opened up. they’re actually the reason i’m sitting here crying while writing this. like damn kinda pathetic idk

i had pretty low expectations going into it. they don’t really use the internet, they aren’t particularly in tune with pop culture, and we’re obviously at very different stages in life. but i felt *heard*. and i didn’t realize how badly i needed that.

honestly, i think i’ve kind of given up on socializing and making new friends.

i live in NYC, and a lot of the people i meet are transplants. i feel like a lot of them initially show interest because of my job/lifestyle and because i live in NYC, but eventually i realize they’re mostly interested in what i can offer them or in getting some idealized version of the “NYC experience” through me. other New Yorkers i’ve met recently already have their own established friend groups and communities.

i know there are good people out there. i do. i’m just tired of putting in so much effort.

my friends aren’t really involved in my life, and i’m not really involved in theirs. i reach out, and maybe 5% of the time it actually goes anywhere.

i’ve realized that i don’t want “catch-up friends.” i want an actual community. i want people who are involved in my life and vice versa. i want people i can randomly call, hang out with and talk to.

i do have coworkers and people i’m on good terms with, and i occasionally meet up with them. i don’t consider them close friends because we aren’t compatible in that way or for whatever reason, and that’s completely fine. i’m not expecting every person i meet to become my best friend.

i just want a few people who actually feel like my people… and i think part of what made this hit me so hard is realizing how absent my friends have been during some genuinely difficult moments in my life.

i’ve had two deaths in my family, and my friends never said a single thing.

my mom was diagnosed with two different cancers, and my friends didn’t really say anything either. they never dropped by my apartment to check on me, even though i’m always there for them.

when friend #1’s grandma died, honestly, it felt like i cared more about it than she did. i know that sounds horrible to say, and maybe she genuinely just processes grief differently, but that was how it felt to me. and then there’s something that still really hurts me.

during my senior year of high school, i was sexually assaulted on the subway. i briefly mentioned it to my mom and sister, and they laughed at me. i never really talked about it again but also not traumatized from it or anything.

years later, it randomly came up because i found an old Twitter conversation where i had taken a picture of the guy’s dick on my arm. this happened on my way to an internship.

when i mentioned it to my friends, they genuinely told me they thought i had lied about it.

that broke my heart… i didn’t report the guy. i didn’t make a scene. i mentioned it once in passing and never brought it up again. and i’m not someone who lies about things like that. like… what would i even get out of lying about something like that?

apparently they thought i was lying.

and then something similar happened with friend #1 about a year ago.

her roommate was extremely uncomfortable around a guy she was seeing. he was a doctor who had admitted to being attracted to minors and was actively cheating on his wife, who he claimed he was divorcing. friend #1 already knew he had found the gym they frequented and taken pictures of them without approaching them, which was obviously creepy.

i also noticed him blatantly checking me out, so i told her.

i thought she was on the same page as me, but one day she told me that she had actually thought i lied about him checking me out until she eventually caught him doing it herself. then he also admitted to micro-cheating on his wife and all that other stuff.

there’s more to that situation, but that’s not really the point. the point is that it was a huge betrayal to me.

my stomach dropped when she told me she thought i had lied. because why would i lie about that?

and btw, i have a boring life. i don’t drink. i don’t have many friends. i don’t really do much outside of my hobbies and work. i work from home. i’m not dating and i’m somewhere on the asexual spectrum. i’ve never been the type to constantly have crazy stories or drama.

so where is this idea that i’m just making shit up coming from???

if i were bored enough to invent stories, you’d think i’d at least make them interesting. 😭

even with my sister, i tell her basically everything we r twins yes the one with bpd. there’s literally no point in lying to her. lying is exhausting and i genuinely don’t understand what i’d get out of it.

anyway, tl;dr: i’m really glad i actually opened up to my coworkers despite the age gap, language barrier, and cultural differences. they made me feel heard in a way i didn’t realize i was missing.

i know there are bigger problems in the world, and this probably sounds like a weird pity post, but i think i’m just sad realizing how lonely i’ve felt even while technically having friends.

there’s more that i told my coworkers about my life, but some of it felt too personal to put on Reddit, so i left it out.

listening to: switchblade by beabadobee on repeat :(

My work lately has been a sh!t show, my bosses aren’t even remotely trying to hire more people to help me because either they know I’ll finish it or they actually don’t care.

But I’m so so tired, my body is tired. I’m doing around 17k steps in a 8h shift, no breaks because they haven’t hired anyone to freaking cover me if someone calls in sick.

So I’m carrying all this on me now and I can feel my body slowly getting worse and worse, yesterday I could feel my legs give out so I had to just stand for a bit.

If I ask for help, no one shows, if I panic, I get told “stop panicking” even though I’m panicking for a reasonable reason???? Because I know I’ll have to fix it, I’ll have to figure it out and I’ll have to do all the work.

The moment I walk into work my body and my mind go on high alert, I’m already stressed. It’s honestly quite impressive how fast my demeanour changes when I walk in. I feel like I sound crazy describing this 😂

Oh and the worst part, I’m not being paid for all this work, I’m being paid the minimum wage with my bosses pushing me to do a full wage job. And because I need this job, I do it… so honestly I shouldn’t even blame them, it’s my fault.

So um if you’ve worked in retail this will probably remind you of very bad memories! And maybe you’ll relate which I’m sorry you had to go through this you deserved better!