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I Shouldn't

Feeling low, March 9, 2024

“You’re allowed to be sad about it. Not mad about it.”

Those are the words I just said to myself as I fought back the tears and the gradient of the sinkhole forming in my chest. It’s a pathetic thing to feel bad about. It’s really quite trifling. No reason to feel like there’s a weight on your heart, crushing it from all sides. I’m just overreacting. I’m being too sensitive. And despite how much I tell myself all this, it still hurts.

It’s genuinely quite insane to think how much import you put into spaces you make online. They’re a community. A family. A close-knit bunch of friends that you trust with information you don’t even really share with people you know in real life. And you know that these groups are fleeting. If the passion they have about what bound you together fades, so too does their friendships, and out the door goes the daily conversations, the combined screaming about said subjects, the shared joy.

The very nature of such a friend group is that it comes and goes.

So, I should not feel as I do.

I should not.

And yet, it feels like a betrayal, even though it isn’t.

That I’m the only one still here.

I can’t help but feel I did this.

That I killed the friend group.

I guess I should stop vagueposting and let you know what I’m really talking about. It’s a server I made for the fandom I mentioned in my previous blogpost. Originally, it was meant to be a server dedicated to the ship I championed. And through that ship, many people joined. But as it grew, more people shipped other things, and I was more than glad for others to join in. Despite that, the main ship in the server was the one I enjoyed the most and a lot of discussion occurred around it.

And then one of the members started talking about how they felt it was unfair most of the server was about the ship. As it wasn’t something I could really fix, seeing as the larger portion of the fandom does ship the main ship. There was further disagreement about another piece of content with the same actor and I can’t say I didn’t disagree with this same person on many different occasions. Each time though I believe I was polite. I don’t know. I guess maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was too much in control of the dialogue? Perhaps they felt I was abusing my power as the creator of the server. This person never reached out to me, and after awhile I realised they stopped following me on Tumblr. Though, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure they ever were. Still, I didn’t mind. One of my other friends from the server mentioned this person made their own server for the same fandom.

I didn’t mind. If they felt like they were uncomfortable in the one I’d made, perhaps it was for the best. If other people in my server joined theirs, that was fair was well. Some people didn’t like the main ship and if they found another avenue to discuss the same media in, that’s definitely fair for them to make that choice.

And I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind.

Until my server started to go inactive.

And people stopped talking as much.

In my previous post, I mentioned my server was dead because everyone had moved on.

I assumed they’d moved on from the fandom completely.

Though I think now they’ve simply moved onto another server.

I don’t tend to read much other ships in the fandom, and I noticed that one of the ships was posted by one member whose writing I like a lot. I was surprised to see them having written a different ship, and them not having mentioned it all in the server, since it was a complete divergence from their prior content, and I was intrigued.

After finishing it, I scrolled down to their notes, to see that they were gushing about the other server and thanking everyone in it for listening to them talking about this fic while they were writing it. I don’t think my heart has sunk so low in a long while. It made me realise that all the people I miss, all the conversation I was enjoying was being fostered elsewhere. And they were gladly doing so.

Perhaps the kicker is that no one ever invited me to the new server.

It’s not a betrayal. Not really. It was done openly and fairly.

I shouldn’t feel quite as sad as I do.

I don’t know what I did wrong.

I’m sorry.

I hope you guys have fun there, genuinely. And this probably never was supposed to hurt me. It was probably just another avenue for you to explore your favourite things. And somehow I was stifling that. So, I understand. You don’t need to explain it to me. It would’ve been nice to know. But these friend groups are fleeting. I know this. There is no guilt to be felt from this, on anyone’s side.

And I feel stupidly overdramatic for feeling sore like this.

But I am.

I think I will finish crying, have a shower, and then drink a cup of water.

Tomorrow I will waken with swollen eyes but I’ll feel better.