It's Not All Roses

Chapter 8

I started to get back into my old hobbies again. When I was bored, I found myself animating or streaming games, two things I quit doing a while back. It was weird, but it felt good. I forgot how much I enjoyed doing those activities. I started taking to my two old streaming friends again, Kory and Alicia. We started steaming together again, like the old times. We had a lot of fun.
We started to make streaming a regular thing again. When I wasn't streaming, I was making animations and posting them on social media, lots of people seemed to like my creations. I liked the fact that I could make people happy with my hobbies, it made them even more fun to do. Sometimes I would wake up really early and immediately stream. Most of my streams lasted hours and hours, just playing games that people enjoyed and wanted to see. I liked taking game suggestions. Most of the games people asked for ended up being pretty fun! Not to mention, it made people happy when I took their suggestions.
Over time though, I ran into some.. difficulties. My father wasn't a big fan of my hobbies, so I stopped doing them as often. I would be lucky to stream and check in with my followers once a month. I stopped posting my animations, too. I stopped doing those entirely. I started trying to find new things, but nothing made me feel the same way as those did. I just couldn't find anything else that I enjoyed more.
I started to lose sleep again. I'm not sure why, but my mind was constantly running. I couldn't sleep because of it. I hated it. I just couldn't tire myself out enough to sleep. That surprised me, because I use to be tired all the time, but now I felt too energized to sleep. I wished I had something to make my mind tired. I tried watching movies, texting, but nothing worked. I hated it. Nothing worked.
I had stopped streaming again by this point. I ran out of time with school work, and I didn't want to make my dad upset. I knew he never liked it when I streamed. He'd much rather see me hanging out with him, which is something I can understand. I mean, he is my father after all. I love him, but It was hard to hang out with him sometimes. We didn't share many interests, so finding something that we both enjoyed was difficult. I tried and tried, though. It just wasn't fun.
One morning, Kory texted me, asking if I was alright. I told her yes, but I didn't really know. It felt like I was somewhere in between okay, and not okay. I didn't want to bother her with my problems, though. It made me feel like I was annoying, even though she always told me that I wasn't. I appreciated the fact that she cared, but I knew she had a lot on her plate too. I didn't want to distract her from her important things. That would make me feel even worse.
I stopped talking to Kory and Alicia as much. It didn't feel the same if I wasn't streaming anymore. I liked them, they were nice, but it felt awkward without streaming. It was the one thing we all had in common. I tried and tried to make the awkward feeling go away, but it remained. I didn't want them to feel as uncomfortable as I did, so I distanced myself.
After a few weeks, I found myself missing them. We used to talk so often, but then I joined Dominic's friend group, and the two groups never passed each other. It was difficult, but we all still had streaming. That's when we talked the most. Now we didn't even have that. I wanted to talk to them again, but I didn't want it to get awkward again. that's what I was afraid of. I was afraid that it was gonna get awkward, and just kind of end. Just like that. I hated friendships like those. They made me feel bad.
I decided to slowly get back into streaming, and talk to them again. It made me happy. I even got Dominic to stream with us sometimes. Now that made me happy. Having all three of them with me, just doing a thing we all enjoyed, while making people happy.
I started to talk to Kory and Alicia daily. It felt nice to know I still had them as friends. The three of us had been friends for longer than I could remember. Losing them would be painful. I'm glad I didn't.
I even started talking to them in school again. I sat with Alicia in my science class, which gave us a lot of time to talk and get to know each other again. At lunch, though, we sat with our normal friend groups. At my table, there seemed to be some tension between Harry and a new girl. I could tell Harry was uncomfortable, so after school, I texted him to check in. We ended up talking for hours about our problems, and we both felt a lot better afterwards.
That night was normal, I couldn't sleep. I wanted to, but I couldn't. My mind wouldn't let me. It was working hard again. So instead, I stayed up most of the night just texting Kory. I wanted to tell her about my problem, but I didn't want to bother her, so I kept it to myself. Instead, we mostly made conversation about school and such. It had been a while since we did that. I fell asleep around 3:00 am, and woke up at 6:00 am. It was 3 hours, more than I had gotten the night before.