становление
I really do struggle to maintain a positive connection with people who seem to idle as their default.
This is at least partly a failing of mine; for so many people they simply don’t have the option of study or paid work. I consciously recognise that many of the opportunities I’ve had are privileged ones, lucky, or both, but I wonder if subconsciously I don’t factor that in enough and still think — somewhere deep down — “well, I dealt with childhood trauma, an abusive marriage, a full-blown nervous breakdown, rape, bipolar/borderline diagnosis, and still have managed to be successful and independent since I turned 18, so why don’t they?”
Again, I don’t like to think I believe that, but nonetheless people who have no life direction generate something like repulsion in me, so much so that my last major falling out with a friend was — on my part — kinda due to their having no goals or purposes in life.
This ties in a little bit to generally wanting to be led, in my relationships. If someone doesn’t even lead their own, I don’t trust or respect them enough to have them lead mine; heck, not even enough to let them lead it the tiny bit that a normal, balanced friendship or relationship inevitably entails between two people, let alone as much as I’d like to.
I think I want to be led because, generally speaking, I have my shit very sorted out. I am happy on my own, take care of myself fully, and can be left to my own devices indefinitely. I have my interests and I engage in communities relating to them comfortably. So if I’m going to be close to someone, it’s not really because I have a lot of things I’ve been waiting to show someone, or because I’ve been dying to let someone in close. I already do those things — such is the spot on the aro-spectrum I sit, where my proclivity for openness and truthfulness means I have closer and more romantic connections with friends than many do with their romantic partners.
Instead, it’s because I want them to show me and take me places in the abstract space of (relational) possibility; to put me somewhere in their world and let me play into the role they’ve marked out for me. And to believe that’s possible, I need to see them starting with themselves first; to see them actually lead a role in a world that’s their own.