I flinch at friendship the same way I flinch at love.
And it's a different equation depending on who's across the table. With women, you don't always know where you stand until the knife is already in your back. Especially as a nurse, I'm surrounded mostly by women, and I've watched it happen in real time more than once. A group of them tearing into someone who wasn't in the room, and the second one stood up to go check on a patient, they turned on her before she'd even made it down the hall. I remember sitting there thinking… how am I supposed to trust people who can do that with no remorse?
Men are easier for me. I'm autistic, so I'm direct, I say the thing, and I tend to understand their operating system. But there's a different math waiting there. I never know if a man values me as a person, as a friend, or if he's just banking time, waiting to cash in later for something I never put on the table. I hate being the one who has to turn down a man I thought was a friend. Because the "no" reveals I never had one. The friendship was never the point.
So I find it hard to invest in people. I don't want to hand you the knife you'll turn on me later. I don't want to wait around for the day you get bored and find someone new to be close to. I don't want to watch you slowly disappear until my texts are ignored indefinitely.
Isolation starts to look like the smarter trade, because then I don't have to worry. I don't have to guess. I don't have to be hurt when the truth inevitably finds its way back to me and I finally know what you said and did behind my back.
Humans are social creatures and need companionship to properly thrive, but gosh, we make it so hard to connect with each other. I can't help but wonder where we went wrong.