Losing a friend, ADHD and Grief

I think something we don't talk about, almost ever, is the life fact of losing a friend. Not to a dramatic event, necessarily, but sometimes even the slow loss of fading connections. In my life, I've lost a LOT of friends when I was young because we moved so often. I've lost a few to distance, and a few to dramatic events that had an impact both in the short and long term, as well. 

Sometimes when I get those security question that ask you things like "the street your first home was on" or "your first grade teacher's name" or especially "your childhood best friend" I think-- who knows those things? I know people do, but it's definitely not me. I moved regularly as a child, sometimes with some notice, often without any notice at all. My family's single mother, excessive poverty lifestyle was anything but stable in those ways. I always have to choose one or two of the "security questions" that have to do with things that are less about your early childhood..... It makes me a little sad to realize how many of those usually ten questions I can't even come close to answering. (Also this is part of a discussion I think I'll eventually write about CPTSD, as well, but not today). 

But back to the point-- losing a long term friendship. Sometimes it CAN be a dramatic thing-- a big fight, especially. In our culture, we talk about losing love a lot. You turn on Netflix alone and there are going to be entire categories of movies and TV shows that deal with this. (And this doesn't count the ones based on death, which isn't at all what I'm talking about). So culturally, I don't think we practice the thought of what happens when a friendship ends.  And part of you tells yourself that you're making too much of it. That you shouldn't be this upset. That you're over-reacting. But then part of you KNOWS you're over reacting and can't help it and knows that the over reaction might even make what you dread worse. 

It's hard. It's as brutal as the love relationships. Sometimes I think it's even more brutal because a part of you, at least at some level, expects those love relationships, romance, to not last forever. (And I don't mean marriage-- because that's a different topic entirely). 

So the point is-- being ghosted by someone who you care about, who you think of as a friend, and who you try to reach out to and connect with to let them know -- "hey, this feels really bad; what's going on?" is really, really rough. 

Image from article at this link.

I have a kind of emotional issue with my ADHD called RSD: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria that makes this kind of thing even worse. Because look, I ALWAYS worry if you don't text me back right away. I can handle it if it's a few hours. But if you leave me on read for weeks at a time, and there's no real reason I can trace it to, I'm definitely certain you hate me and never want to talk to me again, and if I tentatively say "hi" trying to rekindle that chatting and you don't reply, or you reply that you're busy and will get back to me but then NEVER DO, be pretty sure that I am devastated and spending hours thinking about it in a way that would seem stupid to most people. There's a reason why ADHD is an actual disability. It makes life a lot harder in everything, but people will say "don't let it bother you so much; it's not as big of a deal as you think" but hey, look. I want you to know that it IS actually as big of a deal to some people as we think it is. Your neurodivergent friends are definitely upset. And we can't just stop being that way any more than a blind person can just think about it harder and see things better. 

A neurotypical response to something might say "ah well; I'll deal with that when I need to; they're busy; whatever" but trust me, even if it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to you, and even if maybe you think you not talking to them when they've reached out to you is just YOU being busy and not having time to respond-- a certain percentage of us are mourning, deeply, the loss of a friend we trusted. And we don't do trust deep friendships easily, by the way.  

So if you manage to work your way into a trust circle of a person who is very introverted and also has a neurodivergent mind-- please don't ghost them. And know that the amount of times they've reached out to you to try to connect and find out what's up are actually HUGE steps, and even a short "hi, I'll get back to you soon; I'm busy" would go a million miles to let us know it's not the worst case scenario we already have built up.