What happens in Long Beach stays in Long Beach
...except for the juicy details I'm about to share with y'all right here
I need to give props to my good friend Amanda for showing me such a wonderful time last week in Long Beach, California.
Me and Amanda have been friends for over two years, and I just absolutely adore her. She’s one of the most kind, considerate, encouraging, thoughtful, fun, supportive, authentic women I’ve ever known.
We’ve been online friends since like March of 2022 and we’ve gotten to know each other really well since then. From the beginning she’s been the only person I can talk to for three hours straight and feel like we still have things to talk about.
I haven’t friends like her probably since I was in middle school.
Our friendship feels pretty effortless nowadays. It’s hard to remember that it started out the same way as any friendship, and that we had to put a lot of work into it to get to this point, because now it feels like we’ve known each other forever, and we know we can share anything with each other, and we help one another through so many of our individual struggles.
When we first started talking, I was still really withdrawn from others. I didn’t think I wanted friends. I thought other people were a threat, and they would only hurt me, judge me, or take advantage of me. I was scared to talk to members of my own family, let alone a total stranger.
And yet, something told me it was okay to talk to Amanda. (I still didn’t think it was “safe,” per se, but I guess I felt like it was at least worth taking a chance…)
When I got PTSD, one of the things that happened was I started to feel like I didn’t want my friends or family to ever know how I felt about myself, or what was going on inside my own head. I thought I had to protect everyone around me from my own madness, almost like if I were to open up about it, I would somehow infect them with the same darkness that was inside of me.
From day one, I refused to talk about what had happened to me, and I started to cut people out of my life who I was afraid to ever be vulnerable around.
When me and Amanda met, I knew right away that, here’s someone it’s safe for me to be vulnerable with.
Of course, it still took tremendous effort to start to open up. I was scared to let her see my insecurities. I worried constantly that if she found out “how messed up I really am,” she’d stop being my friend.
But any time that happened, she reassured me that friends don’t stop being friends just because one of them is acting mental (even if I have to act mental for like, six months, because of all the trauma I’m trying to work through and never seem to know how to do without acting weird).
We’ve grown really close and she’s easily my BFF now. (Well, one of ‘em, anyway. I’m actually pretty lucky that I have like, three BFFs — but I’m really glad that one of them is Amanda, because she’s pretty amazing.)
Last week, we finally had an opportunity to meet in person. And with my trauma and my anxious personality, I was terrified that it was going to be the end of our friendship. It’s easy (and safe) to be online friends, but hanging out in person and still being vulnerable, and feeling safe and comfortable, and allowing that other person into my personal space? That’s really intimidating. I don’t do that for just anybody.
(LOL, I actually don’t do it for anybody at all… I’m so scared of other people… nobody gets to see the real me in person… I always have to have some walls up to ensure my safety.)
I was so worried about all the ways our meeting could go wrong and could ruin everything, I wound up calling the veteran’s crisis line the night before I flew out to Long Beach, and telling the operator I was having a meltdown worrying about just going to meet somebody in person.
Y’all, even though I knew all my fears were only in my own head, that fear feels so real, it still had complete control over me in the hours leading up to me and Amanda finally meeting in person. I had a laundry list in my mind of all the different ways things could possibly go wrong — and I was convinced that all it would take would be for one wrong thing to happen, and Amanda would decide I’m really not worth knowing, after all.
I really believed that the “real me” would be such a disappointment, that Amanda would take one look at me and turn around and walk away, leaving me alone, and lonely. And I believed that, if that happened, I would deserve it.
I know that was my trauma talking. And I knew that since we’d already been talking for two and a half years… of course we would enjoy each other’s company. I knew that was the truth of it all. But I still felt like everything was going to fall apart, and I was going to lose one of the best friends I’ve ever had, ever. I’m so glad those fears were wrong.
I had so much fun with my friend.
And that’s one sentence that, since I got PTSD in 2003, I never thought I would be able to say again.
Literally, I have not friends like this since the end of eighth grade, when me and my best friends from grade school and middle school started to go our separate ways. I had friends throughout my high school years, and they were fun, but they weren’t the same as the early childhood friends I’d made — and managed to keep — from about fourth grade through eighth.
And even though I’m a friendly, outgoing guy (when I’m not giving into my anxiety and isolating myself from everyone I know), I’ve just never had friends of that magnitude ever since I came home from the Navy.
I don’t think I was ready to have real friends again, until I started hanging out with Amanda. And even then… I’ve been afraid this whole time, that at any moment, I could lose Amanda’s friendship, and be right back where I have been, for the last 21 years of my life: alone, afraid, anxious, uncertain, unwilling to do anything different because I’m so convinced that nothing will ever change and nothing will ever take away this lonely feeling I have inside.
But after meeting Amanda in person, and hanging out with my BFF for three days in Long Beach, talking and laughing and watching old movies and eating some really good food and just feeling safe and comfortable and open with somebody who really knows me and really, genuinely likes me…
Everything is different now.
Now… because of her… because of our friendship… and all the work we’ve both put into it over the years…
Now I’m ready to believe that I can have friends, again. And that me and my friends will be happy to be in each other’s lives.