Just so you know...
Last night's post came from a place. Not an emo place. A slightly lonely place, sure, but mostly a contemplative place, not an emo place (I feel I should stress that bit). You see, what I realised was not that I don't have people who think like me. As far as I'm aware I don't have people who think like me, but that was a secondary realisation. The thing I realised first was that my longest running friendship stretches back to about Year 9, with Ellis, and I haven't heard from him in months now. I don't have other guys from school, not even guys I can pretend I like to hang out with, or that I can say "I'm not going to hang out with you because I don't actually like you" to; they're gone; they've been gone for about three years now. No ties left, what so ever.
So the longest running friendships go to Amy and Kelly, from work, but who no longer work with me, with a running time of four years. It's a pretty good sign that we're still really good friends - my inability to keep in touch with people seems to have been over-run by their fondness for me, which makes them willing to actively keep me tied to them. The problem is, they're nothing like me; Amy is a gothic fairy - sweet and loving, she will rage like a dark storm if you wrong her or her friends; Kelly is gorgeous and so full of class and style and smarts that she could kill you with her mind or body, after verbally abusing you for being a sleazy prick of course. I love them like the worlds I dream, and they are my girls, but sometimes I feel like the token gay, the cute little toy you get with your happy meal. Besides, I couldn't have the sorts of conceptual discussions I dream of with them; there's a mental language barrier, a firewall I can't cross. And it's not a deficiency on any point of the triangle, it's just that we're different.
And after them, there's first year friends. Mainly Cyn, Hannah, and Miss Amy. Hannah outright mocks me for writing, in a friendly sort of way, so there's no chance of conceptual discussions there, despite being able to tell her things. And Cyn... I'm kind of too embarrassed to try to talk to her about these things, because while she's known me long enough to know that I'm 75% outside the box, I don't think she realises just how much 75% really is, and I'd rather not frighten her away. Also, she doesn't really have the right background for conceptual discussions - again, there's a mental language barrier.
I find it rather ironic that the role of Wall then fell to Miss Amy, who was probably my last First Year friend, and with whom initial encounters were the most severely awkward. Perhaps that's actually helped somewhat with showing the real me - we went through the awkward awkward phase where I was pretty much metaphorically naked, so everything else becomes that much easier? Still, I feel I sort of abused that a little over the past couple of months (sorry if I bored you to tears), and while I know you wouldn't tell me to bugger off, I worry that you want to sometimes.
Anyway, my point was that I don't have that long-term from-childhood (or even early teenhood) friend that a lot of my friends seem to have. And I'm jealous, because I could really use one. Not just to help me get past the 12,000 word mark for the Project, but to discuss concepts for things in general, to fall back on whenever I need to, for anything. Or even for nothing, just so I could say "I've known him/her my entire life; we grew up together". I don't really know why that's important to me, why I miss it without ever having had it, but in recent times it has become that way.
And yeah, I realise this post is coming from about three different view points, with three different desires rolled into one, and that it's in no way cohesive. I have no solution for that. Perhaps if you'd met me in the nineties it wouldn't matter so much. Then again, my brother has known me my entire life (since 1987!), and I still frustrate him just about any time I speak. Which is annoying because he knows Science and he has good Logic, where mine is... well, tainted, by my thought patterns.
So the longest running friendships go to Amy and Kelly, from work, but who no longer work with me, with a running time of four years. It's a pretty good sign that we're still really good friends - my inability to keep in touch with people seems to have been over-run by their fondness for me, which makes them willing to actively keep me tied to them. The problem is, they're nothing like me; Amy is a gothic fairy - sweet and loving, she will rage like a dark storm if you wrong her or her friends; Kelly is gorgeous and so full of class and style and smarts that she could kill you with her mind or body, after verbally abusing you for being a sleazy prick of course. I love them like the worlds I dream, and they are my girls, but sometimes I feel like the token gay, the cute little toy you get with your happy meal. Besides, I couldn't have the sorts of conceptual discussions I dream of with them; there's a mental language barrier, a firewall I can't cross. And it's not a deficiency on any point of the triangle, it's just that we're different.
And after them, there's first year friends. Mainly Cyn, Hannah, and Miss Amy. Hannah outright mocks me for writing, in a friendly sort of way, so there's no chance of conceptual discussions there, despite being able to tell her things. And Cyn... I'm kind of too embarrassed to try to talk to her about these things, because while she's known me long enough to know that I'm 75% outside the box, I don't think she realises just how much 75% really is, and I'd rather not frighten her away. Also, she doesn't really have the right background for conceptual discussions - again, there's a mental language barrier.
I find it rather ironic that the role of Wall then fell to Miss Amy, who was probably my last First Year friend, and with whom initial encounters were the most severely awkward. Perhaps that's actually helped somewhat with showing the real me - we went through the awkward awkward phase where I was pretty much metaphorically naked, so everything else becomes that much easier? Still, I feel I sort of abused that a little over the past couple of months (sorry if I bored you to tears), and while I know you wouldn't tell me to bugger off, I worry that you want to sometimes.
Anyway, my point was that I don't have that long-term from-childhood (or even early teenhood) friend that a lot of my friends seem to have. And I'm jealous, because I could really use one. Not just to help me get past the 12,000 word mark for the Project, but to discuss concepts for things in general, to fall back on whenever I need to, for anything. Or even for nothing, just so I could say "I've known him/her my entire life; we grew up together". I don't really know why that's important to me, why I miss it without ever having had it, but in recent times it has become that way.
And yeah, I realise this post is coming from about three different view points, with three different desires rolled into one, and that it's in no way cohesive. I have no solution for that. Perhaps if you'd met me in the nineties it wouldn't matter so much. Then again, my brother has known me my entire life (since 1987!), and I still frustrate him just about any time I speak. Which is annoying because he knows Science and he has good Logic, where mine is... well, tainted, by my thought patterns.