Growing up, I was a very, very lonely kid. That could be the main descriptor of my childhood. I moved around a lot, and I mean a lot, until I was ten. Even outside of the constant travel, there was a forever-running carousel of people in and out of my life. It left me in my own head more often than not and my own head wasn't a very nice place to be alone. Alone was never kind to me and it still isn't. Being alone is a skill I fear I will never master. I hate it and I hated it back then. I was deeply and unendingly jealous of friendships and connections I saw in media. The epic saga of a group so tightly knit that they were a family(Not that the traditional concept of family ever really appealed to me much), willing to go to the ends of the earth for each other. I wanted that so so so bad. I mistakenly thought that was what others wanted too. I had no off valve for the care and adoration poured out to any that came close. No off valve for the possessiveness either. No volume control, no energy control, and no emotional control, I was a nightmare. I clung far too tightly, tried to repair every fracture, tried to get too close. Every time I had to let go it drove me insane. I couldn't understand why I had to let go, why they found it so easy to let go of me. Maybe it's full of myself but I think it's true, I hold friends closer and tighter than most. I have a bad tendency to be smothering, clingy and possessive. I want to cuddle and touch and be close and many don't want that. Or more specifically they don't want that from their friends. One friend, the last from my public schooling in a shitty oil boom town, stopped talking to me one day, no goodbye, no word, just radio silence. I didn't even consider she simply didn't want to be friends anymore, I was worried and concerned and would not back off. The silence didn't tell me too. Or I didn't hear it. One day I was at a Christmas party for my dad's work, I was talking to the one other kid my age. Turns out she's friends with her. She starts messaging and talking about me, I watch on her screen as my friend details how annoying, weird, and clingy I am. I messaged her goodbye and spent the night trying not to cry, Dramatic for a fourteen year old's friendship I know, but I am a dramatic person and have never been able to hold back the tears. I've had various other similar experiences that spiraled into trust issues and "needs". I need contact, I need to talk and be around. I need to be as dear to them as they are to me. I need to know them, their thoughts and feelings, all of it. I am possessive and obsessive. It is obviously not healthy. It took finding friends that do hold me as dear as I do them to tone all that down, to feel comfortable with not knowing every little thought in their heads. To trust them not to secretly hate me. Sometimes I do still spiral, sometimes I don't trust them as I should, as I do. But I'm not jealous anymore. I'm not desperate to "find my people." After years, I have found them. And I love them all.