BOUNDARIES / FRIENDSHIP

Letter 034

How Many Times Do I Have to Ask You to Leave Me Alone?

I waited months for tonight.

Not for a party.

Not for some extraordinary experience.

Just to see my friends.

People I've known for more than twenty years.

People who have known different versions of me. People who knew me before this year became one of the hardest of my life.

And after everything, I wanted one normal night.

One night where I could laugh.

One night where I didn't have to explain why I was struggling.

One night where I could feel like I still belonged somewhere.

Apparently, even that was too much to ask.

At the beginning of the year, I made a new friend.

I was kind to her.

I reached out.

I included her.

We had genuinely good times together.

And then things changed.

There were comments that felt less like jokes and more like humiliation.

There was behavior involving someone from my past that made me uncomfortable.

There was even a moment when I felt like my mannerisms were being physically mocked.

And somewhere along the way, someone I'd welcomed into my life became someone I no longer felt comfortable around.

So tonight, I asked for space.

I didn't ask her to agree with me.

I didn't ask her to understand everything.

I didn't ask her to apologize.

I asked her to leave me alone.

That's it.

And when she kept talking, I asked again.

And again.

And again.

Until I wasn't asking calmly anymore.

Until I was overwhelmed.

Until I was crying and screaming in a car because I couldn't seem to make another person understand the simplest sentence in the English language.

Please leave me alone.

I know how I must have looked.

I know people heard me yelling.

I know someone could describe that moment without describing anything that led up to it, and I would sound like the problem.

That's what hurts almost as much as the night itself.

Because people see the explosion.

They don't always see how many times someone tried to walk away before it happened.

I'm not proud that I screamed.

I wish I hadn't reached that point.

But I also wish my first request had been enough.

I shouldn't have had to become hysterical to be heard.

And then there's the part I don't know how to explain without crying all over again.

My friends.

My actual friends.

People I've known for decades.

I've spent so much of this year feeling alone.

I've gone through things I never imagined I'd have to survive.

I've needed people.

And so often, they haven't been there.

I kept looking forward to tonight because I thought maybe, for a few hours, I could have a piece of my old life back.

Instead, I felt like a stranger in my own friend group.

Like someone else had become more important.

Like the relationships I'd spent twenty years building could somehow become places where I no longer felt welcome.

And maybe that's what finally broke me.

Not one person.

Not one argument.

Not one bad night.

The realization that I could be surrounded by people I've known forever and still feel completely alone.

I don't need everyone to choose sides.

I don't need anyone to hate someone on my behalf.

But I needed someone to recognize that I was overwhelmed.

That I was asking for distance.

That I was not okay.

I needed one person to say, *She's asking to be left alone. Give her some space.*

I needed the people who know me to remember that they know me.

Not just the version of me they saw at my worst tonight.

The person I've been for twenty years.

The person who has shown up.

The person who has loved them.

The person who spent months looking forward to seeing them.

And I wish the person who kept talking understood something.

You do not get to decide that a conversation must continue just because you're not finished having it.

You don't get unlimited access to someone simply because you want to explain yourself.

You don't get to override a boundary because you disagree with it.

And when someone says they're overwhelmed, continuing to push isn't necessarily helping.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is stop.

Walk away.

Let them breathe.

Let them have their evening.

Let them have their friends.

I didn't want a confrontation.

I wanted a night out.

I didn't want to cry.

I wanted to laugh.

I didn't want to scream.

I wanted to be heard the first time.

And I certainly didn't want to go home feeling more alone than I did before I arrived.

But I did.

So here's what I needed you to know.

I was not asking you to fix my life.

I wasn't asking you to fix my friendships.

I wasn't even asking you to like me.

I was asking you to respect the fact that I didn't want to talk.

And to the friends I've known for more than twenty years:

I wasn't asking you to choose me over someone else.

I was hoping that, after everything this year, you'd remember to make room for me, too.

Because the saddest part of tonight isn't that I lost my composure.

It's that I spent months looking forward to being with people I love.

And I left wishing I'd never gone.