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No. 25420
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>>25414
The conversation has me growing all nostalgic now.
This might seem a bit tangential, but the matter of having "friends" is a strange one to me. There was a time I was the most popular guy around, it would be no exaggeration at all to say that I had easily over 100, possibly even 200 people I could call "friends" - yet at the time, I always only thought of them as acquaintances. These people all considered themselves my "friends," though, so I had more personal connections than I could count.
I wouldn't even have considered myself to be a "popular" guy at the time, it just seemed perfectly natural to me. I'd borrow money and lend money, I'd be invited into a person's house when I had nowhere else to turn, and even once or twice taken other people in myself in the same way. Hell, it was more like a large family than a group of "friends," even if they were all more like strangers from my point of view.
I've lived that very lifestyle, one of said extremes which I mentioned earlier on. Living on zero money at all and surviving day-to-day purely on personal connections and frail "friendships," and sure there have been countless times I've been stabbed in the back. In retrospect I was too naive and forgiving for my own good, on more than one occasion I could easily have wound up in a ditch somewhere, that's the sort of absurd things these "friends" of mine would drag me into.
But now, that lifestyle is a world away from me. It's like I was literally an entirely different person back then. I can't even fathom how I survived so long living like that, when now the only thing that matters to me at all is these silly debates I can have with people online to pass the time, just so that I'm not left staring at a wall for all my waking hours, or cradling a bottle of whisky like it's my only real friend in the world.
Actually, to tell the truth, that bottle really is my only friend at this point. I do consider the people here acquaintances, but nothing more. Simple conversational partners I can talk to about absolutely anything on a whim without fear of being judged or ridiculed - not for the reason that such people wouldn't judge or ridicule me, but for the reason that even if they did it would have no impact on my life whatsoever. Were these people my "friends" though, that would all change. Being judged by such people would actually have some effect on me if I were to call them my friends, which would lead to me not being able to be nearly as blunt and open with them as I'd like, and in the end it would just be a generally unfavourable situation.
Friends are the kind of people I'd need to be on guard against, I feel. Strangers and acquaintances, however, I can be as open and direct with as I like, since whatever they say or do towards me won't have any significant impact on me at all. I think it's better that way, that's why I've tried to keep such a suitable distance between myself and everybody else this whole time. It's more comfortable for me to be difficult and distant, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
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