Not so long ago I was going through this really awful time. Work was shit and I’d considered handing in my resignation immediately following this thing that had happened.

My mother was dying in hospital and I couldn’t get hold of my brother and I was forced to make lots of hard decisions. Nobody had given me a hug when I’d said things were bad with my mother and I just felt really, incredibly alone in everything I was carrying.

And instead of dealing with those things, I wanted to pick a fight. Probably. I only really realised that’s how I was feeling now as I’m writing this blog post.

But I was dealing with lots of really big feelings and I didn’t know how to deal with any of them so I ended up saying to him that I was struggling with capacity for certain things and could he please meet me? It was about 8:30-9pm. I only wanted to meet him for a few minutes (and said as much) so I could finally give him his Christmas present. I said it’s really important to me to give it to him before his birthday.

But he didn’t meet me. He sent a message to say that he was still working and needed to get some things wrapped up before tomorrow.

And I lost it. Not because he was working or that he wasn’t able to meet me. But mostly because he felt like the one person on this entire planet who could potentially give me a hug. And I knew that if he did come out to meet me if I’d asked him for a hug he’d have given one to me.

I felt like I was at the edge of what I could deal with and I needed that bit of physical contact. I needed that bit of emotional connection with someone else.

In that moment when I got his message I started to cry. And then I got mad. And I deleted him as a friend. And I archived our message thread on Whatsapp and I thought ‘well, fuck you then’ and I honestly, truly believed that would be that.

It wasn’t though. It never is.

We went about a week or ten days without messaging maybe before I finally cracked and asked him if he’d seen the latest about a thing we both follow.

And eventually I sent him a friend request.