I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile, but just... haven’t. Some of that is life, most of it is me.

Some of you are going to read this and think “what in the hell is she talking about” but I know that some of you are going to read it and know exactly what I mean, and know exactly what I am talking about. And this is for you, all of you.

None of you are the only one I abandoned.

None of you are the only one I lost touch with and don’t know what’s going on in your lives.

This isn’t exactly an apology and it isn’t exactly an explanation, but it’s somewhere between the two and I’m sure some of you would like to talk more about this in private, which is fine, but I wanted to make this a public declaration-- because I might have done this to someone and not even know I did it.

Some of you might not be aware that I just got through with a pretty dark six months in my life. Maybe not so much on the outside-- I still ran around laughing and having a good time and making awesome memories with some of the people I love. But inside, things have been a total wreck. The problem, I think, with me sometimes is that, when I get depressed, I am not sad. In fact, sometimes I am actually deliriously happy, or at least really enjoying myself. The smile isn’t fake-- the smile is real and when someone says “How are you?” and I say “Great! How are you?” it’s not a lie.

But when I am depressed, I don’t want to DO anything. I’ll go out and do things, sure-- if people invite me or if it’s an event or whatever. But I mean, I stop wanting to DO things. Responsibilities, even for fun things, even towards people I love, become burdens and the burdens become too much. I end up with the emotional and creative equivalent of “spoons”-- I only have so much to give and it’s a very small amount, before I am utterly exhausted and just cannot give anymore.

When this happens, sort of out of necessity, all of my “emotional spoons” get spent on the people physically the closest to me, the people who are constantly on my radar, the people who I cannot shut out. In the past, this has really not been too much of an issue. My distant family suffers, more than they should, which I hate, but the damage radius has always been pretty low.

But over the past few years, I have ended up more and more on the internet, had friends in an ever growing number of places that I ONLY see online, or that even when I see in “meatspace” the setting up of those meetings is online. And online is disastrously easy for me to unplug and walk away from.

And then once you walk away for a few weeks, it becomes harder and harder to come back.

The explanations required get longer and longer, the apologies more and more severe, until it becomes too difficult to handle, emotionally, even on your best days. There’s too much to apologize for, too much story in your friends lives that you have missed out on because you weren’t there. Too much gone.

In the past, whenever this happened, I would just pick up and move on. There might be some of you out there on Facebook or LJ who think this pattern sounds familiar. With whom I just “lost touch”, stopped returning calls or e-mails or whatever, a long, long time ago. Cut my losses, gather a few close friends around me, and start over, has always been the way I’ve done things. Don’t face up to my stupidity and doubts and the hurt I’ve caused has always been the name of the game.

But I want to do things differently, this time.

I’ve made too many important, wonderful friends out there in the last few years to just totally abandon everything and start over. I love everyone too much.

And this is an invitation to ANYONE out there who reads this, who I’ve lost touch with, over the years due to this. I miss you. I miss my old friends and my newer ones. I miss the memories we made and the things we shared. If you do too, and you feel like it, drop me a line. Some of you I’m too nervous to do that myself with, because of how we ended or what you’re doing now. But I can at least extend an invitation.

I have moved cities without letting you know. I have made crazy life decisions without you knowing about them and without your input. I haven’t been there for you, for your crazy life decisions and your hardship and your joys. And I can’t even say it won’t happen again, not with 100% certainty.

But I can say that I’m sorry. I can say that I’m really trying to make this time different, to start a new chapter in my life and to write a different ending. I can say that I miss you, and that it was never any slight against any one person in particular-- just a wholesale unplugging.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

How are you?