Feeling like Rip Van Winkle

I miss community and authentic friendship. I feel like my friendships are transactional or extremely limited. If I’m not fulfilling a need I feel easily dismissed. I’m stuck in my small bubble. Since people don’t have to see me face to face they don’t have any accountability to our friendship. They don’t have to see how their disappearance makes me feel. They never see the tears.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a people person. I wish I didn’t need people. I suppose everyone needs people to some extent, but I was not built for the life of a hermit. People don’t realize how isolating disability is. Add in Covid, and I have not left the house since November 2019. I feel like the kid in “Secret Garden”.

Actually, I feel more like Rip Van Winkle only I’m awake to see everyone else’s lives pass me by. I’ve seen people go to grad school and finish. I’ve seen families of two become four. I’ve seen single people find and marry the loves of their lives. Seen nieces and nephews go from kids to adults. I feel frozen in a time that no longer exists.

I wish I could figure out why people that used to be close can’t bring themselves to be around me. Being stuck in this bed is not contagious. I feel like people avoid me because of my disability or personality. Either way I am left alone.

New authentic friendships are hard to come by these days. Online ones can be fickle and not long lasting. I feel people outgrow each other sooner online. There is a level of anonymity that doesn’t allow some to fully invest, or withdraw investment sooner. There is no risk of running into each other in the wild. I have been ghosted several times by people I thought I was close to. People don’t feel so bad about letting you go.

I don’t know if it will always be like this. Maybe I’ll grow thicker skin. Maybe my health will get better and people won’t treat me like an Old Testament leper. Either way something has got to give. I don’t know how I’m going to change it, but I have to. I will always be a people person. Hopefully I can find a new way to fulfill that longing in this new world I find myself in. Isn’t that how we hoped the story Rip Van Winkle ended? From here on out idling you will not find me anymore.