Hard week

This is a hard week. 

On the one hand, there’s the realistic, almost chemical, fact of coming down after 2-3 weeks of almost steady high, nonstop go-go-go — hence the ensuing physical tiredness and also a sense of emptiness. 

But what makes this particular “low after the high” so hard is that it’s Thanksgiving week. 

School is on break, none of my colleagues are working besides me, there’s no classes to keep me busy or provide some social interaction. But worst of all, it’s the week when many people, including many of my friends, travel to visit family or have family visiting or have plans with family. My housemate has their whole family in town and it’s proving extremely hard on me. Fortunately they’re staying at a different house, not with us, so I’m hardly interacting with any of them. But just the fact that they’re here, that my housemate, despite being trans like me, has the love and acceptance of their family of origin, is a painful reminder for me of what I don’t have. It makes my mother’s incapacity to accept me, her harsh words, my sister’s lack of understanding, and the loss of my father even harder to bear. 

And on top of this, there’s also the loss of a close friendship that I have to deal with. 

E. was one of my very first climbing buddies when I moved out here and for over two years I considered him my closest climbing buddy. When we met in the summer of 2022, we climbed together every weekend and often even once or twice after work on weekdays. Our friendship grew fast and he was one of my strongest cis-het guy allies. Even when I moved to a different town in the autumn of 2022 we kept up our weekend climbs together and for two solid years our platonic friendship grew steadily. Over the course of 2025, though, the distance between us has been growing. He’s gotten married and is trying to “start a family” with his wife and she, in turn, has wanted to go climbing with him. Which effectively means he’s been spending almost his entire time with her and hardly any with me. 

Change is natural, paths diverge, friendships grow and wane, relationships change. Sometimes this happens organically, without it requiring conversations or explicit adaptations. But with my closest climbing buddy the changes had concrete painful consequences on our friendship as his unavailability for weekend climbs together kept growing to the point where he canceled a climbing trip together at the last minute last May. After that, I tried to have a conversation with him about his and my needs in our friendship, to make it work despite our diverging paths and different availability. It was a hard conversation but it seemed to help somewhat — until this past Sunday, when he bailed on me again, at the last minute, literally half an hour before we were going to meet for our hike and after having spent a day planning things and making compromises for an activity together. He bailed on me to go climbing at the gym that evening, not because he was sick or had some kind of emergency. He broke my trust and also broke my heart (platonically). 

For me, especially because I am estranged from my family of origin, friendship is extremely important: to me, it is the foundation and the apex of relationships. My close friends know this. I don’t expect everyone to agree with this, to feel the same about this; but if you’re a close friend of mine, you know this is how I feel and this is how I behave — and expect to be treated — in friendship. Trust is key. It’s the fundamental currency of love. Having that trust broken, feeling that my company isn’t that important for this climbing buddy, would be hurtful in any moment. At this particular time, it is devastating. 

This is yet another ending, yet another loss that I’ll have to deal with and mourn, but just now, I really don’t know how to go about it and all I can feel this week is the pain on all fronts.