It's not even there...

Another day is not really guaranteed

2:04 am 03.25.08

My mom and I talked a lot tonight, both about my brother and my aunt's kids and also about friendships. I guess I expect a lot from friendships, and it's something that I picked up from her, because I know a lot of people who refer to people they talk to in class or hang out with occasionally as "friends," and I'm not like that.

If we don't spend time together or at least talk on a regular basis, we're not friends. It doesn't mean I don't want to be friends, it just means we're not friends yet. Or we're not friends anymore.

Society feeds us all this bullshit about high school friends being friends forever, or the people you meet in college being the friendships you keep for a lifetime. And that's all it is -- bullshit. I don't really know why the couple of people that I was friends with in college don't seem interested in connecting with me anymore... I mean, I think the whole online journal thing is pretty low-key. If you're still interested, you'll read and throw in a comment from time to time. Pop in on AIM. Ask for a phone number and actually use it. Whatever.

My mom said, "maybe they've just moved on," and I guess that could be true. I can understand why you wouldn't really feel like conversing with the nomadic singleton when you're all cozied up in a permanent or semi-permanent residence with your S.O. But, man, don't fake it. Don't act like we're friends when we're not. Don't act like you're interested in my life when you're not. I'm not dead, and that should be good enough for you, because now you know you don't have to be depressed about it.

It's never been easy for me to make friends and I could never understand why. Granted, if someone has issues with overweight people, I couldn't really hide that fact, but I tried a lot of other things. Dropped the whole all-black-scary-makeup look, took time to put myself together, talked a lot and was gregarious, talked a little and listened, tried to be bubbly and energetic without forcing it, et cetera, et cetera. But nobody was ever interested, so I stopped trying.

Oh, I'll still leave my Facebook information whenever I stay with people on these job things, but nobody ever writes to me or adds me, unless I added them first. Well, whatever. It's hard trying to go it on your own without much of a support system, but it's not impossible.

And some people -- assholes, liars, thieves, people who are just plain mean and nasty and rude and dishonest -- they end up with tons of friends. But trying to be a big bitch only got people talking about me behind my back, so that didn't work, either.

I know I'm a cynic, but I can't help it. I'm just tired of it. I actually tend to be pretty optimistic about life in general -- if I wasn't, I'd be dead by now. And I've met lots and lots of very nice people, even strangers who have been kind to me and have done what they could to help me out, so I can't just write it off as people being sucky. Maybe I'm the one who sucks.

Then || Now