Friend

I cried recently when my friend of over 20 years left my house to go home. We live two and a half hours from one another and we get to see each other maybe once or twice a year. I cried really hard.
We have spent a great portion of our lives apart from one another. However, throughout those separations, we remained so similar in our interests, values, life goals, and dispositions as humans.
That weekend we spent time reminiscing, and doing very basic things together. With her, I did not feel like I had to try hard to make my presence worth her time. I didn’t feel like I had to fill the silence or mask myself in an effort to be more interesting. I didn’t have to be the listener either. She let me talk about my fascination with bugs, my recent struggles, and my ever random thoughts. It was so nice…
When she left to go home, I felt my heart sink. I think I realized the weight of my own loneliness. We had a conversation about how I am often out of touch with people. How I spent most of my graduate degree entirely oblivious of the drama of my small cohort- entirely separate from everyone. I realized I’ve done that for most of my life, since I moved away as a child. I had one close friend in middle school, and then high school and college were filled with acquaintances who fell off after each graduation. I didnt think this bothered me, after all, I have friends whom I occasionally spend time with. However, I find myself listening, masking, trying to be worthy. I know this is normal- not every friend can have the history you have with a childhood friend, but I wonder if I’ll ever feel the acceptance I feel with her. I am leaving my current job soon, and I feel out of place, people have already started to ignore me more. People I thought I had formed bonds with, seem fine with my fading out. I feel like I am having to try hard for even basic interactions now. I’ve had no responses to my leaving... Maybe that is part of the reason I felt so alone when she left. I don’t know, but I do know that, for the first time in a really long time, I did not feel the monachopsis that lingers in every interaction I have. I am so grateful for her…

"Asking for a friend" isn't actually a punchline. In all of the thousands of times I've seen people write that on the internet, I can't think of a single time that it came across as funny. You can't cargo-cult your way into wit.

Suffering from a miserable cold. Man can transplant hearts and stimulate, directly, certain regions of the brain, but can’t cure something as common as the cold. My parents keep mercilessly inflicting me with their senseless flat reasoning and self restrictions. I watch them turn my brother into a programmed spineless monster but there’s nothing that can be done. The problems have matured too greatly., A friend of mine declared their desires to run away just a while ago. I guess it’s the ‘in’ thing to do in the scene right now. She told me her parents wouldn’t even care. For a long time my parents told me to just leave, or should I say asked. And now they ask me why I haven’t yet, why I’m still sticking around. And when I do leave they will wonder why… “What did we do?” “We gave him everything…”

I’m in the process of possibly making a new friend. Pretty neat but pretty risky also knowing I might be gone soon. This kid would be sorta classified as a closet punk. He dresses it, listens to it, but isn’t interactive with the scene. Classifications suck. He’s just different like we all are more different than most. He’s quiet, warm, responsive, and I also feel he’s hopeful. I felt from the first time I saw him an air of necessity, strength, and sadness. And then from the first time I talked to him, it sounded he was being restricted: possibly social and/or self. I think his name is B---- C------… but as usual with names I forget for sure. I’m hanging around in the café, waiting to be disciplined in ‘jugs’ – justice under god – what a fucking joke. I’m hardly trying anymore in school. Time for a cigarette.

What does it take to be happy in my life of pain, based near entirely on self-restriction? A steady flow of entertainment equaled by freedom of choice and self. Entertainment sometimes keeps stationary while pain continues to rotate. Since I can remember happiness has attempted to coward away. And most happiness has to be self-inflicted. My eyes burn for sleep. My eyes crave to the images of love and happiness. When I saw the gulls (herring) playing and preying in the back of my house it was lovely. When I saw the concern for my disappearance it was lovely. When I saw friends willing to invite me in it was lovely. Why can’t I just keep writing? There’s nothing else to do. I would like to sleep but it would be near impossible.

There are mild-but-noticeable overtones of addiction in the friend thoughtword.

I used to have friends I would get together and drink with, but then I moved away and had drink I would drink to feel better about having no friends to drink with. And, since then, I have moved once more and can't drink for fear it will kill my unborn baby's brain cells.

So, what do I do now? Real stuff, I guess.

I don't need lovers. They turn into ghosts. I don't need sponsors. They make me want to use. I don't need relatives. They impose and take, suck you dry. I don't need acquaintances, they make me feel more alone than if I were in a room by myself. I need actual, true friends. I don't know that I've ever had a friend that wasn't also a user, or a lover, or both.

He called me his best friend. That was better than any birthday present he could possibly have bought me.

I have never lost as many friends as I did last year. Facing my problems head-on didn't work. Running away isn't an option, because I am incapable. I am not a sneaky person, I really don't know what to do. Except drink. That won't fix this. Why do you keep crippling me? Why can't you be honest? I'm trying, god damn it. I'm coming to terms with myself. And you. Your opinion of me will never be meaningless. Until I'm dead. Or in some kind of coma. Stupid, happy and numb.

Recently I have made a new friend. I make alot of new friends, and I meet new people often. My problem lies in the fact that with each and every person I meet, I find myself enthralled with them. I adore them, I want to know them deeply, share their life dreams and secrets. I fall for all of them. I think this is because I am such a compassionate and just plain passionate person that I can find something beautiful and amazing in everyone. But this new friend of mine, things are different somehow. I adore them completely. I want to know them deeply and share alot of my time with them. I find them fascinating and interesting. But there is something else there, something I have not got from anyone else. This person unknowningly fufilled something for me. Something I needed desperately.

I am on here to be anonymous but I think I am not so. Yet here I sit still telling you all of this. Maybe because I do not know if I could do this in person. Which is odd because I am very open and honest, to the point of being blunt, about my thoughts and emotions.

And here is the part where I flip out thinking that you will think of me as insanse or even obsessive. That you will write me off. Is that even something you would do? I do not know you well but I don't think it is.

And maybe this is all just you. The people I talk with that know you as well say the same things. To an extent of course. You're amazing and talented and fun...all the general compliments.

Do you enjoy to tantalize me? Are you a great puppet master and want to watch me dance? Are your intentions for me good? Do you have intentions at all?

I do not know if you know what you did for me but I can never thank you enough for doing it.

If I could just go back to being on that rooftop...I'd stay there for Eternity. Even if I was just your comfortable friend.

Part of me hopes you'll never see this. Part of me wishes you would.

I'd like some feedback on something.

Has anyone here ever had a truly positive turnout from "friend dating"? That is, dating someone who has been your friend without open romantic interest for a significant length of time.

I've had a previous bad experience, and I have a potentially great opportunity to be with an amazing girl, but the usual anxiety is kicking in.

We already kind of lost ourselves in the moment and fooled around, then came the emotional confessions of how we've had feelings for each other, etc. And it's like she's perfect, all the things I've been complaining that I wish I had in a woman on Ether, and I just didn't acknowledge it before.

As trusted anonymous confidants and counsel, I've come to everyone on Ether to either encourage me or bring me back down to Earth, because I'm 99% sure I'm just getting carried away like usual.

I am the worst friend ever.

I have a friend. I used to want her to be more than a friend. But finally, now I think I can almost say I love her. Lust is something that gets in the way of love, I've realized. Maybe I need to dissociate love and sex? I guess that would make me more like another friend, who is a person I'd wish I was if I didn't have a penis. I wrote a song about her. And about lust. And about post-apocalyptic fucking.

I always thought you would be there for me when I needed you. But apparently, I was wrong. We have gone our separate ways And I do not know if we will ever get on the same path again. I had everything planned in my mind how things would be. Now, things have changed, and plans have been thrown away. You will never know how I feel because you cannot get past yourself. You say things, but I cannot take you seriously. You come off as hypocritical. You want things to change, but you will not take the time to change them. You say that time is limited to you, and you do not know how to spend it the right way. I see where you put your time, and for a long time, it has not been in our friendship. Our friendship is what kept me going at this school. It is what kept a smile on my face when the world seemed crazy. Day by day, I feel us growing apart. I want to stop it, but I realize that it is not I who has the power to, but you. You have more power than you realize. You need to be yourself and stop putting on a mask for the world. I feel like I have been the constant in our friendship. I have never changed. I am the same now as I was six months ago. You, on the other hand, are not. I never thought you would change. Maybe you did not change. Maybe I saw the “real” you for the first time. I valued our friendship with all my being. I thought you did too, but I realized not as much as I do. You know my history, and you know that past friends have betrayed me. I just never thought that you would become like the very people in my life that betrayed me.

Thinking back I can't believe how much I let you affect me. I don't know why I didn't see then that you were just like the rest of them, concerned only with yourself.

But I'm happy to say that after two years I've come to realize that I don't care what you think anymore. I don't need your approval. You don't matter to me now. And it is all your fault.

I hope that one day you need a friend like me, just so it can hit you that you threw me away.

i hope she knows how much she means to me.

if not, then i might have to go throw her into a lake or something.

or poke fun of her more.

eventually she'll get it.

but for now, i am pretty sure she knows that her just being her and being there has kept me from cutting off 300-odd people's relation with me from being cut, killed, and buried.

shes a great person.