I’m tired of emotional attachments

To me, being emotionally attached to someone is equivalent to giving this person power over your feelings. It takes one heated argument for them to ruin your day or one loving conversation for them to make your day. Why is it that caring about someone comes at such at emotional expense?

At this time in my life I have the privilege of saying that I know a lot of people. However for the past few months I’ve noticed that I’ve been feeling suffocated by maintaining close friendships with people because it’s such a huge emotional investment. I’m suddenly these all these people’s mum, therapist and personal cheerleader all at once. I recognise the importance of having supportive friends in life because everyone needs someone to talk to –  but everyday? really? The problem is that the majority of my friends get upset and insulted when I purposely choose to reply 2 or 3 days later. Quite frankly it’s because I don’t actually care about what you’re wearing tonight or what hilarious joke your sister told you.

At first I thought this was because I had too many friends at once, so last month I decided to cut down and only give my attention to my 3 closest friends. I could only bear a maximum of 2 full conversations with each person in the space of a month. Every other time, I felt myself becoming bored and eager to leave to conversation in order to be by myself. So I just ignored them, spending more and more time alone as the days went by.

This might sound heartless but I care about these people in the sense that if something life threatening was happening to them then they’d have my undivided attention. But the probability of them being in a life or death situation is very low on a day to day basis. This means that every other day I’m supposed give a damn about everything else in their life. I really don’t care about people that much any more and lord knows I hate small talk.

I think this is because I’ve finally become very comfortable in my own skin and I’ve learned to love my own company. I grew up emotionally detached from my parents and still to this day I feel like a stranger in my own home when they’re around. I’ve spent my life trying to gain their love and affection only to be abused in return.  It’s heartbreaking, being attached to someone. I’ve had certain expectations of people in life and I’ve been let down a lot.

Now I literally have no expectations from people because I’ve gone past caring. If people want to stay in my life, they can stay. If they want to go, they can go. I have no fight left in me for people. I love being alone.

Note: There is a difference between isolation and solitude. Isolation is being cut off from the rest of the world, feeling lonely and devastated. Solitude is the ability to be away from the rest of the world and feeling invigorated by it, knowing fully well that I have access to people. I personally enjoy my alone time more than anything, however I can still enjoy human connection in moderation. I don’t encourage you to cut off emotional ties, it’s just the way I’m currently feeling due to personal experience.