I picture Simba, screaming up into the clouds. You said you’d always be there for me. But you’re not.

I feel a lot like that today.

With illness and constant fluctuations that have life altering effects, sometimes we just need someone to talk to. And at first, there’s a lot of ears. People want to help, people want to be there but as time goes on and health doesn’t improve, people leave. It’s really hard to be the necessary shoulder for someone when there’s always going to be something they need to release.

It’s harder to find new people. Because then you have to explain much more of the picture and not many people can even grasp the ways chronic illness changes your life, so their automatic responses are those only practical for the able-bodied population.

And maybe this is why therapists exist, because people in our own lives put up walls that leave us all alone.

I’ll admit, this isn’t a me vs. the world kind of post, it’s just a me needing a sounding board since no one else seems to be around.

I don’t claim to not have faults or not perpetuate some of the isolation I find myself enveloped in.

It’s hard to reach out for help.

Yesterday it hit me that we needed more people in this world who were willing to lend a hand and go the extra mile even when we say we’re fine. And by willing, I mean people who WANT to help. Like my best friend Mikayla the day I moved into my first apartment who not only stayed late, assisted with the internet provider, but then insisted on getting me ice cream to help ease my head pain and pick up a few groceries for me. She just wouldn’t take the “I’ll be fine” as my final answer.

People like that are rare.

Most of the time, people extend themselves and they don’t mean it or can’t actually assist in the way they offer. Like offering to pick up groceries.

It’s funny, I can manage to reach out to people I haven’t spoken to in ages to help get me to a hospital, but something like needing a few items from the store and not wanting to spend the $10-$20s in fees and inflated prices becomes a kind gesture that no one will actually uphold.

Groceries aren’t really the point though.

These last few months have been a whirlwind of crazy. Between moving out, hurricanes, bug infestations, my parents deciding they’re moving, my health taking another dump on me, crazy stalker neighbors, moving into another apartment, asshole brothers, and now moving plans changing again I’ve desperately needed an ear.

It’s all really complicated and so much of it revolves around finances. I have a really hard time disclosing financial information to anyone but the people directly involved which vastly limits the ability for a well-intention-ed internet stranger to serve as my sounding board.

It’s also really exhausting trying to explain complex finances to anyone.

And so I’ve been my own sounding board. But I’ve reached the point where the answers aren’t in my head anymore, but the people with the answers keep changing their minds.

I’m being left out of conversations that directly impact me. What was true yesterday won’t be true tomorrow, and a cycle has started that I don’t quite know how to break out of. I’ll have a rather simple question that will have a straight forward answer. The question will get pushed back or tip-toed around. More questions come up. Things change in the mean time. And what started as a simple question, is suddenly an exhaustive conversation that leaves all parties involved miserable and feelings as if they’ve “lost.”

No one holds space for me for the simple questions.

And so the simple questions turn into arguments.

And the next time there’s a simple question, it doesn’t get asked. Because each time it finally get’s asked, it is assumed to be me picking a fight.

Asking for clarification isn’t an argument. It’s asking for clarification.

So weeks will go by, questions build and go unanswered by anything other than my subconscious sounding board. And the cycle continues and we all lose.

Arguments with my mom spread like wildfire and other people I’d go to no longer want to be a sounding board because they want to lecture me for having a fight with my mom.

The cycle continues.

I don’t reach out.

I need to, but I don’t know who to turn to who won’t turn it back on me.

I want to be involved. I want to be consulted. I want to be able to ask questions without this awful cycle that assumes I want a fight.

But I’m not.

So I’m sitting on my living room floor. Friends ignoring me because I may as well have moved already. No sounding board in sight. No one even willing to have a conversation because I’m confused by the ever changing information.

I’m tired, but mostly I feel completely and utterly alone.

All I want is to be allowed to occupy space.

A.