Upon reading this post I believe I have been turned into a pregnant woman with messed up hormone levels, I mean who else could read the worthless laugh free angst that is below? I have consulted the Internet on what to do to regain my humor and testicles, they have advised me to sample my own urine and get back to them. Until me and the Internet diagnose the problem I will leave this post up as a reminder to everyone that I am feminine in both my man-boobs and my writing style.
Today I have more friends than I have ever had in my entire life, and that number is 5. The final spot is shared between the two work wives, one of which no longer works with me and neither of them I interact with outside of work. All 5 have made some type of appearance on this blog and at least 2 of them have read it. Should I be proud of having 5 friends? I think pre-25 year old C-Minus would either be envious of my current 5 real friends or delusional enough to think he currently has more.
When I first got a cellphone I would put in everyone/things number I could find. This includes random acquaintances who I have barely speak to, family members who I would put in just to pad out letters with few names under them, and I will admit for the first time ever that I have used the "I can't find my phone, can you call it so I can locate it by the hip jamster ringtone?" at least 3 times in real life to obtain a number. Yes all 3 of them were girls. Yes I understand how pathetic that is. I wouldn't contact these people, they would be there just so I would have some identities to look at when I was too scared to reach out to someone.
I stopped being cute at the age of 8. I realized I wasn't cute at age 12. I started being bitter about not being cute at age 14. Each one of these touchstones made me a more closed off person, by the age of 14 I would limit most of my interactions with people to some scripted dialogue trees that I could easily control. Throw in some well rehearsed jokes and I could almost make it a full school day without being called a slur term used to describe homosexuals or Jews. Path of least resistance. I use that term often these days, but back then I used it as a lifestyle.
But C-Minus without real human interaction makes C-Minus a terrible person speaking in third person. As 14 turned to 17 turned to 21 I started to feel like some kinda robot. A robot who existed to eat fast food, work crappy jobs, play videogames, pleasure himself, track down serial killers and use my skills as a blood splatter analyst to murder them, and then go to sleep.
Sometime around 21 my life took some dark but still lame turns until a family member I looked up to got sick. To quote the awful movie Elizabethtown, she and the rest of our family was met with a "hurricane of love." During this health stuggle, one of the many entirely self-centered feelings I had was jealousy. What did my family member do that was so freaking special to warrant every random person to come out of the woodwork and support her? This family member kind of treats her friends like crap, but she was open with them and they accepted her. She was free with her love and friendship... almost irresponsibly so.
As she overcame her illness I used this time to selfishly reflect upon my life and realize that loving and being loved is more important than beating the 4th Splinter Cell game (especially the 4th one, oh man that game sucked). But I am not my family member, I am not a "popular person" with a "charismatic personality" who people are "drawn too." But I think that's a good thing because it also helps me not be not an irresponsible friend. I have been stood up and dumped on too many times by too many people to just excitedly bounce from one BFF to the next one.
I look at the relationships with the 5 friends I have now and I am proud of them. I am not proud of much in my life but I have worked, seriously worked to have these people in my life and me in theirs. Sleepy Cricket is on the friends list, he's only been there for about a year too. We knew of each other for a couple years before that and I felt we should be tight before that but me being closed off to people and him being aspergery it took me kicking down the door and forcing myself on him (________________there was a gay sex joke here but I thought it would be more fun for me to just leave this blank spot for you to fill in your own with marker) in order to make it happen.
Over the past 4 years I think I have learned how to be a good friend. For me it requires some sacrifice and taking a bit of a chance, but I think I'm usually up to it. Not to toot my own horn but I'm like the non-tree version of the giving tree. In fact just yesterday I told Bean he could cut down my trunk so he could make a canoe or however that story goes. Sometimes I think I treat my friends more like responsibilities than friends, I feel like I need to protect them from others or isolate them from parts of my life. I just thought about my 5 friends and realized aside from 2 of them and the wives they all come from different parts of my life. For the most part we don't get together like the cast of Friends (if we did I would be Chandler... Sleepy Cricket could be Gunther), they are connected through me and I like that. When one pushes to see the others on my friends list, I normally push back. You are my friend and I hope that I am yours, this other person is my other friend and you'll see them if/when you see them. Is that possessive? I really don't care that we have other friends, in fact I think it makes us better friends, but I'm not here to set up play dates and then worry if you two don't get along or get along too well. I'm also not here to be your dad your dad, not your matchmaker, not your director, not your comedian, not your eye candy, not your charity case. I'm here to be your friend.
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