If I Could Help One Person — Part Six

Yes, relationships come and go. We've all said that. We say it like it's wisdom, like it softens the blow. And maybe it does — a little. But there's a version of that truth that doesn't get talked about enough: the relationships that didn't just drift away on their own. The ones that mental health and substance abuse quietly dismantled, one episode at a time, until one day you looked around and realized the room was empty.

That's the part nobody warns you about. Not the detox, not the diagnosis, not the medication adjustments. The part nobody warns you about is the loneliness.

The Counting

I've had periods in my life where I felt genuinely rich in friendship. Abundant, even. And then there were stretches where I felt like I had absolutely nobody. Not one person I could call at 2 a.m. Not one person who really knew me.

Most of my friendships over the years came from bartending. That world has its own kind of intimacy — you're in the trenches together, you share a language, you close down bars and talk about everything and nothing. It felt like family. And for a long time, it was.

But as the years went on, and I started to get some traction in sobriety, those friendships slipped away. Slowly at first, then all at once. I can count my true friends on one hand now. One hand.

Do I want it this way? No. But I've come to understand something I didn't want to understand for a long time: mental instability drives people away. Not because they're bad people. Not because they don't care. But because it's exhausting to love someone who is unpredictable. Someone who is sometimes brilliant and warm and the most fun person in the room, and other times unreachable, or volatile, or drowning. I can't say I blame them. I really can't.

"I can count my true friends on one hand now. One hand. Do I want it this way? No. But mental instability drives people away — and I can't say I blame them."

The AA Question

I suppose that's where a lot of people land — they turn to AA. They go to find sober connections, to be around people who understand the particular kind of loneliness that comes with getting clean. And I get it. I genuinely do.

But AA has never felt like home to me. It feels, if I'm being honest, like a cult. The chanting, the mantras, the phrases repeated in unison — it just doesn't resonate with me. I really wish it did. I've tried to find my way into it more than once, and I always end up feeling more like an outsider than I did before I walked in.

So I've had to find connection in other places. Social media, for all its problems, has been one of them. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say in a wellness space, but it's true. It allows me to feel like I have connections — real ones, with real women who are going through real things. And that matters. It has mattered to me enormously.

But online connection is not the same as human contact. I know that. I need both. Most of us do.

The Friendship I Lost

There was one friendship that I think about more than any other. We had thirteen years together. We worked side by side, and I loved her like a sister — the kind of sister you choose, which is always the best kind.

The friendship ended at the worst possible time in my life.

I had been under psychiatric care for major depressive disorder. This was before my bipolar diagnosis — before anyone understood what was actually happening in my brain. My doctor had put me on Prozac. What nobody told me, what I didn't know and couldn't have known, was that Prozac can trigger a full manic episode in someone with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. That's exactly what happened. I became agitated. I became someone I didn't recognize. I made mistakes in our friendship — real ones, the kind that are hard to come back from.

And that was it. Thirteen years, gone. A sister-level friendship, over.

I have spent a lot of time sitting with the weight of that. And the honest answer is that most of it falls on me. I own that. But I also know now what I didn't know then — that I was in the middle of a medical crisis that nobody had correctly identified yet. I wasn't choosing to be that person. I was being driven by a brain that was misfiring in ways I couldn't see or control.

That doesn't erase what happened. But it does change how I understand it.

My girl code back then was off. I can say that plainly now. These days I take it very seriously. Loyalty, discretion, showing up — those things matter to me in a way they maybe didn't when I was younger and messier and still figuring out who I was.

"I wasn't choosing to be that person. I was being driven by a brain that was misfiring in ways I couldn't see or control. That doesn't erase what happened. But it does change how I understand it."

The Balance Nobody Talks About

Here's something else I've learned, the hard way: you cannot trauma dump on people indefinitely and expect them to stay.

I know that sounds harsh. But it's true, and I think it's important to say it out loud because nobody really does. When you are in the thick of mental illness or early sobriety, you have so much inside you that needs to come out. And the people who love you will hold that for a while. They will. But there is a limit to what any one person can carry for another person, and when you consistently bring your heaviest self to every interaction, people start to brace themselves before they pick up the phone.

I've been on the receiving end of that too — someone who could only ever talk about their pain, who needed every conversation to go deep immediately, who couldn't just sit with you and laugh about something stupid. It's exhausting. It makes you feel less like a friend and more like a therapist. And eventually, you start to pull back.

Finding balance in relationships means knowing when to go deep and when to keep it light. Not every conversation has to carry the weight of everything. Sometimes you just talk about the show you're watching, or the restaurant you want to try, or the ridiculous thing that happened at the grocery store. That lightness is not avoidance. It's connection. It's what keeps relationships breathing.

What I Know Now

I am still learning how to be a friend. I think I will be learning that for the rest of my life. Sobriety and mental health treatment have given me the clarity to see my patterns — the ones that push people away, the ones that ask too much, the ones that go quiet when I should speak up and loud when I should listen.

I don't have a full hand of friends. But the ones I have are real. They know the whole story. They've stayed through the hard parts, and I've stayed through theirs.

That's worth more than a room full of people who only know the good version of you.

If you're reading this and you're in the lonely stretch — the one that comes after the drinking stops, or after the diagnosis, or after the friendship that didn't survive — I want you to know that it doesn't stay this empty. It gets quieter, yes. But quieter is not the same as alone.