On Old Friends
Jun. 20th, 2003 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredericksLast night as I was waiting for Jo to call me back I started thinking about my track record with friends and old relationships. I can count the number of people that I considered friends on two hands. Pretty pathetic, huh? Of course it is if you're someone with a crapload of friends. I didn't ask your opinion anyway. That was a rhetorical "pretty pathetic, huh?".
Anyway, as graduates with a degree in Psychology are wont to do, I started thinking about why that's so. Why is it that I never really clicked with anyone? Why was I never part of a clique (even though I despise them, but that's not the point)? Being the quasi-neo-Freudian that I am I'm thinkin' it all stems back to early attachment issues. My mom had me when she was fairly young (I refer to myself as a "mistake" and a "bastard child"; Jo, bless her heart, puts it more delicately:"you just weren't planned"...friends are there to sugarcoat the truth, more than anything else) and she ended up leaving college to work for whatever reason, so my aunt ended up taking care of me most of the time. Boy, was I attached to her. I think that if I had to choose between my mom and Zola when I was younger Zola would have won every time. I think my mom knew that too and it really got her goat sometimes.
But of course Zola ended up with a family of her own eventually and she had less and less time for me. I'm sure she didn't mean to abandon me, and she didn't, not really. But it just wasn't the same. And my mom was cool and all, don't get me wrong, but she wasn't Zola. So that was my first mother figure gone. What I think I took from that experience was a need to be the center of other people's lives. Not in a "me, me, me!" attention-getting way but I wanted to be special to other people in a way that would make them not go away. I can't enunciate that any better. It's sort of unclear to me even now the hows and whys of that. But it still holds true today, 16 years later. And I'm so not going to refer to that again. I just really felt like putting that out there.
The first "best friend" I lost was my cousin who moved to Maryland when I was...? 10? Maybe a little older. It wasn't really a friendship, now that I look back on it. She used me and teased me entirely too much for our feelings to be mutual, but I felt I could open up to her and share things with her at that young age. After she moved she called me less and less frequently and I eventually picked up on the fact that she didn't want to speak to me anymore (I'm slow, but not *that* slow).
Through elementary I knew everyone in my grade (I went to a small Lutheran school; me, the Roman Catholic...you can cut the irony with a knife) but didn't really consider anyone a close friend except for maybe Jo. My intelligence played a part in my isolation. I'm not tooting my own horn here because I'm the first person to admit I'm a friggin' dolt, but teachers picked up on my test scores and would point me out a wee too much for comfort. I was also a very quiet child and we all know how teachers love the docile kids. Two strikes against me. The only thing that helped me out was my love of sports. It made me more normal, maybe, not just some dork that liked to read encyclopedias (my classmates always used to tease me about that, but our classrooms had the really cool ones with the nice pictures and interesting entries...really, who could blame me?). Long story short I never felt the need to socialize in elementary because my school was so small you were forced to know everyone. I had 27 acquaintances, 1 friend, and a large family. I didn't feel lonely and, more significantly, I didn't feel the need to socialize. Having a lack of socialization skills will really bite you in the ass when you get older. Or so I've been told.
So I get to HS and it's huge. Friggin' Bronx High School of Science with like 500 freshmen. And the quiet shy bit doesn't exactly earn you friends anymore (unless you're quiet shy and HOT, which I was not, unfortunately). I was lucky enough to meet people like Quincy and Alexis (don't ask me how they managed to tolerate me because to this day I'm still in the dark) and Irina (a wildcard, but she was my skip-partner during senior year...such a bad influence *smile*) but that was basically it. Again, lots of acquaintances, very few real friends.
But then I started meeting people online and it was tres cool. I'm reading about internet relationships out the ying-yang now so know entirely too much about what psychologists and sociologists think about the phenomena, but I want to add my two cents - thank God I had access to the Internet. I was able to supplement my social network so much while on AOL (but damn AOL to hell, they keep on sending out those friggin' CDs!), and I'm sure it saved me from serious depression when things got tough. I was able to be myself and share more of myself over a phoneline than I could face to face, because it was easier to meet people like me and to expand my horizons as well. Share more of myself, not all of myself, because, honestly, I'm a mystery even to me. I attempt to delve every so often and I've even tried to explain how I feel sometimes, but I feel like my words don't really reach the other person. But I'm digressing slightly.
Over time, however, my relationships online and offline started to fade. Why? Friendships, like any relationships, take work to keep 'em going. And one or both of us in the friendship decided to let it die. For the online ones: I can never end things cleanly (yes, I'm one of those people who pulls the bandaid off slowly instead of with one hard tug) and a lot of them limped on for months, even years. But eventually they all bit the big one.
To be honest, most of the endings didn't really affect me. Except for two. Last night I got to thinking about one of the two, a friend to whom I'd promised my comic collection if I died. I was really really close to this person but we, for one reason or other, never made the transition from online to telephone. Perhaps that did us in. Perhaps that's just me looking for reason when it really doesn't make much sense to me (hey, not much does). I feel like the connection was closed more from his end than from mine, and if he ever contacted me I suppose I wouldn't mind a chat or two. But...it's painful. Pathetically painful, perhaps. That's why I usually prefer to napalm my bridges instead of leaving them around for revisiting. Just not knowing the who's or whys of why our friendship died hurts like all hell. And I know, I know, the mature thing to do would be to initiate contact so don't bother telling me that. Please. Save us both some time.
But, yeah, I fully intend to send him my big-ass trunk full of old X-Men and ratty Spidermans and comic cards when I bite the big one. Because a promise is a promise and he stills means a lot to me, pathetic or no.
And I hope to God he's not reading this. I'm sure if he ever came across it he'd just die of laughter. Boy, am I insecure or what?
Anyway, as graduates with a degree in Psychology are wont to do, I started thinking about why that's so. Why is it that I never really clicked with anyone? Why was I never part of a clique (even though I despise them, but that's not the point)? Being the quasi-neo-Freudian that I am I'm thinkin' it all stems back to early attachment issues. My mom had me when she was fairly young (I refer to myself as a "mistake" and a "bastard child"; Jo, bless her heart, puts it more delicately:"you just weren't planned"...friends are there to sugarcoat the truth, more than anything else) and she ended up leaving college to work for whatever reason, so my aunt ended up taking care of me most of the time. Boy, was I attached to her. I think that if I had to choose between my mom and Zola when I was younger Zola would have won every time. I think my mom knew that too and it really got her goat sometimes.
But of course Zola ended up with a family of her own eventually and she had less and less time for me. I'm sure she didn't mean to abandon me, and she didn't, not really. But it just wasn't the same. And my mom was cool and all, don't get me wrong, but she wasn't Zola. So that was my first mother figure gone. What I think I took from that experience was a need to be the center of other people's lives. Not in a "me, me, me!" attention-getting way but I wanted to be special to other people in a way that would make them not go away. I can't enunciate that any better. It's sort of unclear to me even now the hows and whys of that. But it still holds true today, 16 years later. And I'm so not going to refer to that again. I just really felt like putting that out there.
The first "best friend" I lost was my cousin who moved to Maryland when I was...? 10? Maybe a little older. It wasn't really a friendship, now that I look back on it. She used me and teased me entirely too much for our feelings to be mutual, but I felt I could open up to her and share things with her at that young age. After she moved she called me less and less frequently and I eventually picked up on the fact that she didn't want to speak to me anymore (I'm slow, but not *that* slow).
Through elementary I knew everyone in my grade (I went to a small Lutheran school; me, the Roman Catholic...you can cut the irony with a knife) but didn't really consider anyone a close friend except for maybe Jo. My intelligence played a part in my isolation. I'm not tooting my own horn here because I'm the first person to admit I'm a friggin' dolt, but teachers picked up on my test scores and would point me out a wee too much for comfort. I was also a very quiet child and we all know how teachers love the docile kids. Two strikes against me. The only thing that helped me out was my love of sports. It made me more normal, maybe, not just some dork that liked to read encyclopedias (my classmates always used to tease me about that, but our classrooms had the really cool ones with the nice pictures and interesting entries...really, who could blame me?). Long story short I never felt the need to socialize in elementary because my school was so small you were forced to know everyone. I had 27 acquaintances, 1 friend, and a large family. I didn't feel lonely and, more significantly, I didn't feel the need to socialize. Having a lack of socialization skills will really bite you in the ass when you get older. Or so I've been told.
So I get to HS and it's huge. Friggin' Bronx High School of Science with like 500 freshmen. And the quiet shy bit doesn't exactly earn you friends anymore (unless you're quiet shy and HOT, which I was not, unfortunately). I was lucky enough to meet people like Quincy and Alexis (don't ask me how they managed to tolerate me because to this day I'm still in the dark) and Irina (a wildcard, but she was my skip-partner during senior year...such a bad influence *smile*) but that was basically it. Again, lots of acquaintances, very few real friends.
But then I started meeting people online and it was tres cool. I'm reading about internet relationships out the ying-yang now so know entirely too much about what psychologists and sociologists think about the phenomena, but I want to add my two cents - thank God I had access to the Internet. I was able to supplement my social network so much while on AOL (but damn AOL to hell, they keep on sending out those friggin' CDs!), and I'm sure it saved me from serious depression when things got tough. I was able to be myself and share more of myself over a phoneline than I could face to face, because it was easier to meet people like me and to expand my horizons as well. Share more of myself, not all of myself, because, honestly, I'm a mystery even to me. I attempt to delve every so often and I've even tried to explain how I feel sometimes, but I feel like my words don't really reach the other person. But I'm digressing slightly.
Over time, however, my relationships online and offline started to fade. Why? Friendships, like any relationships, take work to keep 'em going. And one or both of us in the friendship decided to let it die. For the online ones: I can never end things cleanly (yes, I'm one of those people who pulls the bandaid off slowly instead of with one hard tug) and a lot of them limped on for months, even years. But eventually they all bit the big one.
To be honest, most of the endings didn't really affect me. Except for two. Last night I got to thinking about one of the two, a friend to whom I'd promised my comic collection if I died. I was really really close to this person but we, for one reason or other, never made the transition from online to telephone. Perhaps that did us in. Perhaps that's just me looking for reason when it really doesn't make much sense to me (hey, not much does). I feel like the connection was closed more from his end than from mine, and if he ever contacted me I suppose I wouldn't mind a chat or two. But...it's painful. Pathetically painful, perhaps. That's why I usually prefer to napalm my bridges instead of leaving them around for revisiting. Just not knowing the who's or whys of why our friendship died hurts like all hell. And I know, I know, the mature thing to do would be to initiate contact so don't bother telling me that. Please. Save us both some time.
But, yeah, I fully intend to send him my big-ass trunk full of old X-Men and ratty Spidermans and comic cards when I bite the big one. Because a promise is a promise and he stills means a lot to me, pathetic or no.
And I hope to God he's not reading this. I'm sure if he ever came across it he'd just die of laughter. Boy, am I insecure or what?
