A couple of months ago I started watching an anime called Komi Can’t Communicate. It’s about a beautiful girl with such severe social anxiety that she can’t even speak, but because she’s so intimidatingly gorgeous, everyone projects their expectations on her, seeing her as a mysterious cipher or stuck up idol. It isn’t until another classmate notices what she’s really like and befriends her that she starts to open up to the world and make the friends that she’s always craved.

I’ve never found it very easy to make friends, and I could certainly relate to Komi’s social anxiety. Over the past couple of years I’ve built a tight group, but the underlying fears that had previously kept me from connecting with people are still there - that I’m boring and don’t have interesting things to talk about; that I’m too selfish to be as supportive and engaged as my friends deserve; that my insecurity and mood swings made me act in unkind ways towards my friends, so I didn’t really deserve to be close to anyone anyway.

(Grammatically, I don’t even know what tense to put that last paragraph in. Right now, in this moment, I feel good about myself; I feel interesting and supportive and engaged and kind and not like the dumpster fire of a person that I sometimes feel like, but I also know that a couple of sessions with a therapist and some new reading material haven’t magically cured me. Past and future then, I guess, although all of the reading I’ve been doing about mindfulness says I should be living the present.)

One of the things that carrying that level of insecurity into my relationships does is make it hard for me to be myself. I’m so focused on the other person or people - living up to their expectations, making them happy, agreeing with them/getting them to agree with me - that I stop looking out for myself, and what I want and need. Spoiler alert: neglecting your own needs doesn’t make you a better or happier person. For me, at least, it leads to a lot of resentment, because the unspoken expectation that I have when putting everyone else first is that everyone around me will reciprocate and put my needs ahead of theirs, which isn’t a reasonable expectation to have of your friends.

My boyfriend, who has a background in psychology, mentioned a phrase that I’ve found really interesting - emotional independence. At first I thought it was something that he’d made up, but after Googling it I realized just how well it describes what is that I’m after.

People who possess emotional independence are able to cultivate a sense of happiness and peace despite what may be happening in their lives and relationships. This is not to say that they are never affected by things that happen outside of them, but they still have a sense of who they are and can fulfill their own needs internally.

I mentioned in my last post that I decided to cut ties with a friend who just can’t seem to be a good friend to me. The decision itself was a long time in the making, but I kept holding back and trying to suck it up because I was so worried about the impact it might have on my other friends, who I thought would be angry with me for upsetting travel plans or throwing a wrench in creative projects, and more generally for, like, breaking up The Beatles. And some people were! I had a friend who laid into me about how childish I was being, and it was basically like having all of my worst fears thrown into my face.

Over the last few days, though, there’s been one thought that’s given me a lot of peace and helped me reframe the narrative - “No one has to agree with me in order for me to be right.” Rather than feeling like I have a duty to show everyone that I’m right and get them on board, I can just… do what’s right for me. And that might be the most freeing feeling in the world.

——————-

Character: Inosuke Hashibara, Demon Slayer
Photos by Afrodyte Charlotte, Juan Pintor, and Chris Gallevo