Comic WIP: Moving On (Patreon)

This comic is based on something really specific but it’s something that I’m trying to keep in mind in general. It’s ok to remove yourself from situations that are harmful to you. For the past couple of years, I’ve been having a lot of complicated feelings to do with moving on and distancing yourself from things (or people) that are bad for you.

The context for this comic without going into too much detail is a friendship breakup that happened a couple of years ago. Our friendship was deeply intense but at the same time I always felt like I wasn’t allowed to flourish as a person outside of our friendship. The few times I tried to bring this up, I was shot down and I eventually ended up distancing myself from my friend. Ultimately our friendship dissolved for other reasons (that stem from this issue, from my perspective) and for about a year and a half afterwards, I felt like a terrible person every day. Other friends who I talked to about it reassured me that it wasn’t my fault but I couldn’t shake this awful feeling of guilt and it was eating away at me constantly. In 2019, we tried to rekindle our friendship but after a couple of weeks it became clear that the issues had not magically gone away. It reopened the wound and hurt a lot but in a way I was more relieved than anything else. I realised that our friendship breakup wasn’t my fault and I was finally able to forgive myself.

I still have a lot of hurt feelings about it that I want to express (probably in future comics!) but I think a lot of people probably deal with similar things where they feel guilty for putting themselves first. It’s really hard and messy and complicated to deliberately cut things or people out of your life but I think if it’s something you have to do for your own wellbeing, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.