I'm starting a new label here for the stuff that prevents me from falling asleep whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, which seems to be happening a lot lately. There may or may not be some overlap with the already overinflated Thoughts label, as whenever I wake a second time after, these thoughts already feel like a dimension away, except that the source is still there somewhere in me.
(warning: this post entails excessive use of the word "friends" and may tread over previously blogged territory. I have memory issues nowadays, what can I say.)
Once upon a time when I was younger and presumably a lot more naive (I would like to imagine I'm less naive now, but I never really know), I had this crazy idea that I wanted to be friends with every person I knew. Maybe not so extreme in the sense of the "all-roommates-are-best-friends" aura that I seem to recall inhaling from my first roommate, but at least good enough friends to be able to talk and hang out with them semi-regularly, or even on a whim. This applied to anyone coming from any walk of life, regardless of race, gender, origin, background, etc.etc. Very idealistic sounding, right?
Of course, over the course of a decade, this wound up becoming in practice:
- wanting to befriend whoever my existing friends were friends with ("the friend of a friend is a friend"), regardless of how well I could actually get along with them. There was also an overall preference towards people who were well liked by my other friends in general.
- trying to get involved with a few groups of people who I never really fit in that well with or didn't really know how to talk to, but still enjoyed their presence for whatever the reason.
- feeling left out or discouraged whenever I wasn't invited to something involving people I felt even marginally close to. this would prove rather more distressing later when friends who I'd inadvertently helped introduce to each other wound up hanging out more often than I did with either. this is part of the reason why I despise cliques even though they inevitably happen (and I've been part of them myself).
- feeling left out or uncomfortable whenever I was in the presence of friends talking about a subject that I wasn't privy to knowing about. especially girltalk (note: I know guys who are good at girltalk. I am not one of them.)
- becoming jealous overall of the closeness I saw in relationships between people who I'm not as close to.
(I make exceptions for dating couples because those are already a given, although I do enjoy third-wheeling when they allow me to. :P)
Essentially, that initial idealistic thought or impulse gave way to a lot of anxiety and distress, but almost entirely self-generated and self-centered. Moments where I had trouble talking to people or discovered other social events or knowledge that I wasn't privy to turned turned into blows against my own pride, for making me realize how much I wasn't the easily relatable, well-liked guy I wanted to be, or else sleights against myself, for there must be something wrong with me if this person won't tell me what's really going on. The one time that someone who I personally felt close to confided in me that they couldn't really... confide in me (ironically) for personal reasons, I had an emotional breakdown shortly afterwards and spent the rest of the night walking home in tears and then crying in bed. All for reasons I can't really put into words... but you can probably gather from what I've written so far. And I couldn't simply appreciate what good relationships I did have already, because evidently those weren't enough to satisfy me.
Every once in a while I end up recalling my past failed interactions up until now, the people I ultimately wasn't able to befriend or become as close to in the manner I'd liked, the words left unspoken (or should I phrase it more accurately as the "things people wouldn't tell me"), and the ways in which I wound up becoming more of an annoyance to those whom I incessantly tried to be around even though we weren't that close to begin with. From that first time someone told me to "go away" for implicitly obvious reasons in middle school (ironically, wound up being decent friends with that person for a while), to the times I invited myself to other folks' personal conversations or activities whenever I saw them in college, to the limbo state I find myself in with some social circles even now- these memories tend to creep up when I least expect them, especially in the middle of a sleepless night.
And with the kind of identity complex that I have, it's never been about what these other people did to me (...did they even do anything? did they even really notice?) so much as it's been about what I did wrong or what was wrong with me in general, like it's because I'm too quiet or too introverted for us to establish that kind of open communication. I may make it sound humble when I put it that way, but I mean it in a completely opposite, self-centered way. I even tried to make light of it in my head by noting that I've never really held grudges against anyone involved or even hated or disliked someone for what happened in the past, but that notion in itself meant only to salvage my own pride more than anything. And it makes me wonder if I ever really potentially cared about these people to begin with, or if I only cared about maintaining friendships with them as a way of making myself look better as a person, like "look at how many awesome and unique friends I have thereby making me also awesome and unique!" (I think the social media phenomenon that corresponds to that today would be what, Klout?).
After years of mulling over this, I can write about this now in a somewhat detached fashion and pinpoint where it all came from. To be honest, it doesn't feel like I feel anything right now other than a vague sense of regret, but something more on the level of forgetting my wallet at home and not on the hyper-induced midway to panic attack level I generally experience in the middle of the night, let alone the actual panic attacks I've had. But at the same time, this level of detachment combined with the passage of time has helped at least in making me recognize how problematic my "ideal" view of myself has been over the years, when in reality I shouldn't expect to be able to befriend anyone and everyone even if my own friends are capable of doing so with the same folks. I'm only human and should only expect to be able to achieve so much.
It's been a gradual process for me, learning to accept the current state of the relationships I have, to become thankful for the people who are still present in my life, and to make the most out of what is there to the best of my capacity. Folks will come and go throughout my life, inevitably; better to seize the opportunities that are present with them with an expectant heart, rather than continue to lament over what isn't there or perhaps never really was to begin with. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own mind that I forget.
"The only way to make a friend is to be one."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson? (although I first heard this as a child from a Wee Sing video or something -_-)
And to be one means much more than serving your own heart, in this case.
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