I apologise that this is a personal blog post. It is normally a thing I would put on tumblr but the friend I am writing about is on there, too.

This is about friendships that drift away from you.

I was - am? - good friends with one of my flatmates. We were close-knit last year, with a few other girls in the dorm/college I am staying in. We were a gang of four.

This year, as expected with new 'school' year, there has been changes. One of our friends has left to another city, and myself and another are in the middle of intense research programme so we're focused and busy on our studies. But that doesn't mean I am inaccessible.

The last friend, my flatmate, is an extrovert and made a new circle of friends with new residents of our dorm/college. I don't begrudge that - she needs that sort of energy to sustain herself. I am extreme introvert; and while I am a friendly person to other people, there's a big difference between me being friendly and me viewing anyone as a Friend. And this new circle of friends that my flatmate is hanging out with have such a different set of wavelengths - energies and vibes - that clashes against my own. Rather than merging well with them, I feel exhausted and drowned out. I don't dislike these people, I just can't chill or be comfortable with them. (Does that make sense?)

And so I don't actively hang out with them.

Only, my flatmate does many things with them (and with others). This is all fine with me - I know that she needs many friends, and I can certainly share people. I just need my few friends to stay true to me, too. To consider me, too. To include me in the primary round of things, too. I don't want to have what happened to me last night - to have plans enthusiastically made with another person while I am in the room (you were just chatting with us a few seconds earlier!) - plans that she knows is right up my alley. Plans that have been decided with other people and then to turn to me and ask if I want to join too.

By all her actions, I have come to realise that I have become secondary to my flatmate. We no longer chill or hangout. We don't have conversations - not even on messenger. She doesn't seek me out. When I organise to do things together - like have lunch out - she brings other people along. I have been taken for granted.

And it cuts me deeply to have that realisation that I feel like I no longer matter. I feel so alone in a crowd of people.