Friends

I have not made many friends in my three decades of living, let me more accurately say I have not kept many friends. Here is why...

As a child, I found that people stayed close to you for how useful you were to them. My neighbours only liked me when I had new toys. They would bully me out of my possessions thereafter, their gain. I would cry home and be told to be more careful with my stuff. Kids in boarding school stuck close usually for help with homework, before the boarding school period I had friends who like me were targeted for being related to teachers, the oft seen conglomeration of the weak and oppressed! In college similar interests brought people together. I was glad that my tennis pals where pals even away from the court. This was novel to me. Sadly by college I did not have any contact with the kids I grew up with, kids I went to grade school with. Now in adult life, I find that most people already have their connections, new ones are difficult to forge. (Oh, and all my college friends are dead, to me that is). You meet people all over, but, very few are friends thereafter. At least not for those of us that prefer to be socially minuscule.

I have found peace, somewhat cynically, in the fact that people, acquaintances, friends even are seasonal. They come and go. The 'real' people in one's life will tend to stay. For those at this transient age though, we or our friends will move to other spatial locations near or far. It is at this point that I get tired and flustered - when people leave they keep in touch for some time, but, this too shall pass. They make new connections where they are, so we (the past) are less and less needed until we die a natural death. Now I must for some reason go and make new connections too? I must replace these that have left? I must go out to meet new people and hopefully mesh with one or some of the many I 'try out'? And what happens when they, or I move away? How many times do I need to repeat this? See how I get tired?

Here is how a conversation went on the subject; "Exhausting is really accurate, when you think of all the time and energy (especially for loners like us, it takes more motivation than for sociable people) invested in getting to know people. In the back of our minds, we know the majority of these people won't mean anything to us once we're removed from their presence. So why do we bother? Not to sound lazy. Do we keep up the pursuit of meeting new people in the hopes that we shall find our next true friend? Or do we continue this because it's what society expects from us...? When I move away, how many of these buds will call me to say hey, when most of what they do now is call to say, "What time?" I guess we use people for what they're good for in the time they're in our lives. We all do it..."

I wish I had a friend who knew me in diapers, or in first grade. Someone who knows all my history because they were there. I envy that were I see it, a rare thing indeed. Not all friendships are forever. Very few are actually. I try to keep all the friends I make. I do not take social interaction lightly, it is a bit of an ordeal for me. I would rather avoid the whole thing, but, alas! Try as I might to refuse, I am a pack animal. Deviant. Yes, but, pack all the same. I will not cling to people anymore, the more I cling, the more it hurts when that bond is corroded by time and distance. The few life friends I have, I hope to keep. When I die I hope some old guy will be there to tell what an idiot I was in college, and then I got my first job and became a snob and how I met my wife and she changed my life and blah blah. It may be just one guy, I hope for two or three such tales.

We need each other, I will acknowledge it, I will not strive to live by it, I will not put much effort into it.