Friends and relationships in Journal of life stuff

Continuing yesterday’s theme: Friends and social interactions. Prior to high school the friend I saw most often was my next door neighbor. Too many years have passed for me to remember if he ever asked me to come over, or if I was like Urkel from Family Matters, where I’d just come over. That friend I stopped spending time together around high school. Despite being next door neighbors, we went to different schools. He got into drugs and crime, and I didn’t. By 20 he’d been in jail at least once, and I had my college degree. Last I knew, and this was years ago, he was a wanted man in the state of TN. How far apart our paths diverged. His family was pretty messed up though.

At school I never had friends. Ever. Even in elementary school. There was never a group I always spent time with. I was usually alone. There have only been brief periods in my life where I’ve had friends for a few months or maybe a year at a time. Then they go their own way. For my entire life I’ve assumed I was the problem in that equation, but maybe I’m not. I probably am. My parents never had friends. We never had dinner at a friend’s house. We never ate out with friends. We never visited other people at their houses. I mean, ok, in 20 years, yes, we ate out with friends like…4 times ever. It basically never happened. At some very deep and fundamental level, I don’t know how to have friends. There’s some part of that give and take relationship I simply don’t understand, because I’ve never been able to see it long term.

Facebook was especially damaging to me because, back when I had it, its primary use was finding out when friends were lying to me so I could remove them from my life. Let me tell you, when you think that way, you have no friends. Everybody lies to me. Maybe not to you, but to me? Yes. “Oh, I’m busy studying” 4 hours later pictures of them at a frat party show up. Honey that isn’t the type of biology you were meant to be studying.

It became too soul crushing with a nearly 100% rate of being able to prove that every time someone declined and invite or changed a plan that they lied about why, and the lie always boiled down to “I don’t have the balls to tell you I don’t like you.”. I’ve always assumed I’m the problem, but what if the problem is that, for other reasons, I have always picked shitty people as friends? My best friend went to jail. I didn’t follow him, so I clearly have good sense on when to end things, but…what if my flaw isn’t in my ability to be a friend, but rather in the people I pick to be friends? Thing is, I don’t ever really ‘pick’. If you talk to me I try to be your friend. I invite you places that match your interests (assuming I have any overlapping interests at all). I call/text. I just try to be social. Basically with anyone. There’s a problem and I just can’t see what it is. It’s probably on the end of my nose.

I want to make a gingerbread house, but I don’t want to eat it alone. I don’t want to be the only person who ever sees it. I want to show people all the beautiful Christmas lights around me, but I don’t know how to find people who would be interested and are close enough to come see them with me. I want to cook something to provide for a Christmas dinner with the friends I don’t really have. I do have some friends here, but..they went out for Thanksgiving, and I don’t think I can convince them to not go out for Christmas too. They don’t trust me enough to let me cook everything for them, and I’m not a good enough cook to really compete with restaurants.

I guess this all ties in with my previous post. I have an overwhelming amount of love for my fellow humans, my sadness/depression/whatever you want to call it stems from having nobody who appreciates it in a healthy way, and nobody to shower with that love. Everybody always says “don’t bottle up your anger! It will do bad things!” Well what happens with you have to bottle up your love for others? Bad things.

Because of who my parents were and how they treated me, I won’t go out and provide for homeless or random people. I want to talk to them first, establish a relationship and understand who they are. Why? Because I’d rather keep my love bottled up than have it be used by others who don’t appreciate it. I could spend every Holiday with my parents, call them every weekend, make sure they were totally taken care of, motivated, etc. And you know what I’d get for that? Nothing. They’d still overeat and be obese. They’d still tell me I was wrong about bitcoin investing. They’d still take nothing I said on faith. They’d still treat me like shit, gaslight me, lie to my face, and a hundred other shitty things. I will not love someone who abuses that love. I need to find a healthy way…no. Not a way. I have the ways. I need to find someone who wants to be loved, and is a valid target for being loved, and isn’t fucking evil (which basically means they aren’t a vampire who just takes and takes and takes without ever giving anything back themselves).

So, in terms of remembering who I was before the world corrupted me, there really isn’t much to revert with relationships. I was always lacking in that department, even when nothing was wrong.

But there is still baggage to let go of. I always get nervous talking to women. Like, just tonight, I was riding my bike and met someone walking. She was friendly and wanted to talk (or at least, seemed interested in talking to me) and so we chatted. Everything seemed totally fine. But what bothers me is that I’ve had interactions like that where the other person was terrified I was going to do something bad. As in, people contacted me after the fact and were like “this person was afraid for their life!” Well…they never let on! I’m not oblivious. I am actually really, really, observant. So the fact that I missed these things really bothers me. And what bugs me is not knowing if she really enjoyed our conversation and I should try to find her again tomorrow night, or if she breathed a sigh of relief when I turned around to leave and didn’t re-appear.

The problem is that I even worry about these things. I know I am not evil. If the other person can’t work that out, that’s on them. I am not responsible for someone else’s failure to correctly interpret something. The flip side of that is nobody ever wants the cops knocking on their door (no, that has never happened) telling them not to ever be near someone again because…just…why is that an outcome that can even be possible? I’m not the right person to ever hear that, but I’m one bad interaction away from it at all times, unless I never interact with people. Ahhh!

And that’s the part of me the world corrupted. The world was unreasonable. The world embraces inappropriate reactions, and does not correct the person who takes the inappropriate action, instead, it just punishes the target of the inappropriate action, whether they deserve it or not. And if that sentence confuses you, well, realize it goes both ways. If a man is accused or rape or abuse and he can prove he never did it, it doesn’t matter. He is treated like he did by anyone who ever learns he was even accused of it. The woman who accused him falsely? What about her? Nothing ever happens to her. Ever. But on the flip side, if a woman accuses a powerful man of rape, the reaction (this is changing, but for a looonnnngg time it was true) is generally “how dare you report him. He’s big and important and has so much to give the world. How dare you report his bad behavior”. The powerful man isn’t punished, and the woman is shamed for her ‘inappropriate’ action of reporting him. That’s the thing that makes me sick. It doesn’t matter what is right and wrong, it matters what the gestalt consciousness of society deems ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ and these things are not rooted in right and wrong, they are rooted in insanity.

I give so much energy to the bad outcome possibilities because almost nobody has ever believed me when I could PROVE I was innocent. Seriously. I can count on one hand with missing fingers how many times someone actually said “hold on, what’s your proof” and I ended up NOT being punished after showing that proof. They are the c-c-c-c-c-c-combo breakers in what is otherwise a long string of insane behavior from others. A part of what I hope to find in a wife is one who understand when I am and am not lying because she knows how I think, not because she blindly trusts me. I want her to be the one person who can hear something plausible and know whether its likely true or not because she knows me, not because she ‘trusts’ me. As a point of reference, I very rarely lie. The times I do is generally to protect my physical or psychological safety.