#ke inxelo de āmikon

[rainglade]

My grandfather once told me that it is better to have less friends than more, and to be careful who to consider a friend. He told me about his experience, and how most of the people in your life should be nothing more than acquaintances. I understand what he meant by this, but it makes me a little bit confused. I think advice like that tends to stem from the idea that I just have a super robust social life and throw around my feelings haphazardly, when the reality couldn't be farther from the truth.

When I was in elementary school, I moved three times, and while my old therapist once alluded to the idea that that had maybe impacted my ability to form close friendships (emotional detachment, hyperindependence, etc.) I think it is probably more than that.

Growing up, I knew there were things about me that were different, but I simultaneously also felt as though what I felt was "normal" per se. I just though that things like sexual attraction were barely there for most people, that gender was pretty meaningless for most people, that my perception of the world was consistent with everyone else's. I think when I learned that this wasn't the case, it made me feel a little bit alienated, more subconciously than conciuosly, which made it so that I can't think of a single person I considered an actual friend in middle school.

The people I sat with at lunch to avoid sitting alone had no respect for me and made me leave when the table was crowded. Even the majority of people who I interacted with were friendly and kind to me, but I never felt close to them. By eighth grade, everyone kind of knew everyone, so things had calmed down more and I felt less insecure, but that didn't change the fact that I didn't have friends, and refused to allow people to get close to me when they tried to be friends with me. Come high school, I never was really bullied or picked on (thank goodness for going to a small minority-majority school attached to a college) but even then, the extent of my friendships were sitting next to people in class or eating lunch with my friend starla.

Mine and my mother's brain have a lot in common, so when I learned that she didn't make many friends until college, I assumed it was the same for me, then felt disappointed when I didn't have any close friends in my first year or two. It is recently that I think I have felt that shift. I think the anti-anxiety meds helped with that, and I also think that mentally I just don't care about that things that used to make me anxious.

In my first year of uni, I used to sleep at 9pm sharp so I'd be asleep before my roommate got back and I wouldn't have to interact with him, then I awoke and left at 6am so I'd be gone before he woke up. On the several nights that I was out past 10/11pm, I slept in the library because I was anxious about waking him up when I unlocked the door. It seemed perfectly rational then, but ridiculous to think about now. Things like this have started to fade into the background of my mind; the bars that limited me before have started to disintegrate, and I couldn't be more glad.

I think my grandfather was right, but I also think that before having close friends, you have to first put yourself out there. Love doesn't come to you by making yourself desirable, it comes to you by making yourself vulnerable to it. It comes by opening your heart and mind; your people will not come to you until you come to them. The universe is a machine, and one gear cannot turn until the other one does. Everything is reciprocal, everything is circular. At the end of the day, who do you want to answer to? Who will you willingly be there for, and who will be there for you?