I’m Not A Convenience

On my 25th birthday, we had plans. I was so excited for my Italian dinner and night of vodka drinking, tarot card readings, being around the best people that I knew…or thought that I knew. The day before my 24th birthday no one had said anything. No one had talked about the party or anything anymore. In fact, the only thing that was mentioned was one of the girls asking me to take her out, an hour away, to get her hair cut. She had no gas money though but would “pay it back later.” I started realizing that I was wrong about these people and that they were only friends when it was convenient for them. They only cared about me when it was convenient for them.

On my 25th birthday, I lost all my friends. I was depressed. I felt alone. I drove over to my mother’s and she gave me some beautiful gifts that I absolutely adored. I still felt depressed and didn’t know what to do. It took days, almost a year to fully get over it. To fully accept that these people weren’t my friends. That friends would have been more understanding. That friends don’t just ditch you because you spoke to someone that they didn’t like.

I realized that these people were in it for themselves. In this time of no friends, I grew closer to my mother. I grew closer to some people that I thought were good people, and they still are good people. I grew closer to some acquaintances and I grew closer to my family. I even branched out and made some new friends- albeit online friends, but sometimes, those friends are the best that you can find.

I feel like I grew some because these people left me. These people abandoned me and it made me grow. These people left me by myself and they thought that it was going to hurt me, but it made me grow stronger, it turned me into more of a fighter. It turned me into someone that I didn’t know was in me, but she was there the whole time. I’m a lover, but I’m also a fighter, and I’m willing to fight for my life. I was on a suicidal edge and thought I was losing my mind. I was reaching out to people that I knew were terrible for me and hoping that they were going to be the ones that saved me.

I was looking for someone to save me. I’d been saving people all along, I’d been working so hard all along to save these people and was hoping, praying that someone would come along and save me. Save me from the thoughts in my head. Then I started looking at something. My relationships had improved. My financial stability had improved. My life in general, it didn’t feel like it, but it had improved. My world had improved, and I may not have noticed it at the time, but when I noticed it, it was incredible. It was beautiful. Everything had improved and nothing was the worst anymore.

Nothing felt like it was terrible anymore. Nothing felt like it was the worst thing in the universe anymore. Nothing felt like it was caving in anymore. My chest… my chest that had felt like it had a weight on it for this period of time felt clear. I could breathe again. I was around new people, people that loved me and I had been blocking them out. I was around people that cared about me and cared about what I was doing, and I had been blocking them out of my life because I felt like I didn’t deserve them. The truth was that I deserved them the whole time.

I deserved them the entire time, and I deserved to be loved. It was a blessing that those people left me. At the time, I couldn’t believe that they were leaving me, they were leaving me on my birthday, and it felt like hell. It felt like I would never have another friendship. It felt like I would never be able to let myself love someone again because when I loved someone, it resulted in me being in pain. It resulted in heartbreak- yes, I felt heartbreak from losing my “friends,” but in the end, I realized my worth.

I deserved better the whole time. I deserved better than being a taxi, being an ATM, being something that was a convenience for everyone, I deserved better than that. I deserved better than being someone else’s unpaid service. I deserved better than being someone’s fake friend. I deserved better than having to wonder if they were ever really my friends at all. I deserved better than having to question things.

You deserve better too, you know? If you have friends that make you question things, friends that make you feel insecure when you leave the room, friends that make you feel like you can’t be you. You deserve better than to feel like you’re unloved or that you need to question yourself, question your being. You deserve better than to feel like you need to do certain things just to keep these friends happy. You deserve to know that you are worthy of love, you are worthy of people that care about you for more than what you can do for them, you are worthy of being cherished and to know how special you are. You deserve to know that you’re amazing, and you’re worthy.

My friendships with these people lasted years. Yours might have lasted years too, but you know when you deserve better than what you’re getting, and you know that you’re going to find better than that. You’re going to find it, and when you do, you’re going to realize how little you meant to those people. It’ll hurt, but I promise, you will pull through, and you’re going to feel so much better than you ever have. Something that I had to remember and tell myself over and over; love yourself first, and the right people will come to you.