Um… all sorts of CWs on this. I’m gonna be frank.

I am. I’m broken. I’m like one of those Japanese Kintsugi potteries. Shattered, broken by life, and somehow glued back together with precious stuff… the stuff of my soul, maybe.

Sometimes it’s been the kindness of friends. Regardless, I’m broken. I think with the Kintsugi work, the end result is stronger, but for me? It just makes me more fragile.

I crack, I break, I hurt too easily. It’s probably because I’m autistic that I don’t see it coming (and gods, as many times as this has happened, you’d really think I’d get a clue) but I don’t.

I never really know what will make me shatter again. I have an inkling, I mean… I know that abandonment is a HUGE issue for me.

I have trust issues to start with so when I let someone in *at all* anymore it’s a HUGE act of trust for me. I mean… HUGE.

And that absolutely applies to social media. (Which, because I’m disabled, is close to my ONLY social interaction, so yeah, it’s important to me.) Some people seem able to take social media as this… take it or leave it light hearted thing.

I don’t seem to be able to do that.

I’m not certain if my complete lack of a ‘middle ground’ is an autistic thing or not, but for me it’s really all or nothing.

I’m either invested in something or someone, or I’m not… at all.

I know some of my friends regard this as unhealthy, and it probably is, but at this point in my years, it’s just a me thing. I think I’m too old and set in my ways to change it, if I even *could* change it.

I support my ‘mutuals’ (people who we follow one another on twitter/insta etc) with everything that I am. I review their books, crow from the heavens if I liked the books a lot, I recommend the books. Same goes for artists etc.

But I stop doing that if they hurt me.

I mean… any creativity field is an absolute quagmire of struggling to get by, so I do what *I can* to help my mutuals.

And no… mutuals don’t automatically mean ‘friends’ either. Not to me, anyway.

But they do mean something more than internet strangers as well.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I’ve had to take a hiatus from twitter, again, because I’m feeling so fragile. I can’t leave it completely because all of my income comes through it, so I’ll still maintain my presence *a bit*. It won’t be like it usually is for me, not til I feel better.

I just… I wonder how much pain I can take? I wear my heart on my sleeve and I give any relationship I commit to 150%…

Yet I rarely receive that in return. But as one person suggested to me, there is *nothing* that people do that is *at all* personal. Sometimes people gotta do what is right for them, regardless of the harm they do to another.

It is an innate truth. One I learned somewhere along the line, but I’m grateful for the reminder.

People are gonna do what they’re gonna do, but every time something like a mutual leaving without giving me a heads-up (one I’ve started to get close to offering that kind of friendship to) well… it breaks my faith in humanity one little bit more.

It makes me look around at my circle of people I actually *do* regard as friends and wonder which one of them I’ll prove to be too messy for next.

It makes me wonder which one I’ll drive off next time I’m autistic on social media, or next time I fuck something else up (which I probably don’t even realize is a fuck up because allistic rules MAKE NO SENSE!)

And that kind of lack of trust in people who do, by all evidence, seem to want to be close to me, seem to want to have me in their lives… what kind of a toll is that taking on people that I actually DO think of as friends?

Having a friend not trust you is not cool, it really isn’t. I hate that feeling. So what is my broken assed self *DOING* to my friends when I have moments where I’m looking around and wondering if I can trust any of them?

But it’s just me. I’m just *that* broken. I’ve been abused, harmed, shat on, attacked and hurt so much in my life that it’s so easy, too easy, to look for it coming at me again.

To expect it.

You kick a dog enough, it’s going to start expecting people to kick.

I expect everyone to hurt me, and that is just all kinds of fucked up, isn’t it?

I hope my actual friends understand this about me. That it’s really not a *them* thing, it’s totally a *me* thing.

But how much of my *me* can they take? I’m intense. I know that. It’s caused problems for me my entire damned life.

I’m, in essence, absolutely broken… and I ask myself if I’m safe with any of my friends far too often.

Not cool, Kae, not cool.