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At some point in time a number of years ago, I had a friend who had a falling out with me over my arrogance and immaturity. I confess to this, it was all my fault, and I see it now. I was obsessed with popularity. I was a bully. I was unreflective, inconsiderate, racist, sexist, stuck up, and spoiled, not just in terms of money, but also when it came to the friends and family I, at the time, didn't realize I had to treasure.
This ex-friend of mine also writes a blog, and I check in on it every other day to get an update on his life. Whether he reads mine, or whether he knows I read his, I don't know. And I don't think I'll find out any time soon.
Unsurprisingly, we still share the same mutual friends. We were a tight group back in the day. Four guys, four girls, not necessarily a spider web of eight mutual bonds, but altogether, fairly harmonious, chill, fun company.
I find it kind of weird when my closest friends tell me about him, how he said this in a conversation the other day, or how they're going to meet up with him tomorrow. I feel a bit weird reading about his life without talking to him otherwise. I think it's weird just thinking about him.
For a long time, I've been thinking about meeting a blogger in real-life. I have a feeling that day's not far.
But here I am in a different situation. I knew this guy in real-life. And now I know him only through his blog.
I have always struggled with finding a place in which I belong when I am amongst a large group of people like my class. I don't have membership in any particular clique, nor do I have any one person that really sticks to me wherever I go, or vice versa. It's funny because all my close friends outside my school have that exact same situation in their respective communities.
In my class, I don't really know if I fit in or not. They tell me that they all want me to go on a graduation trip, and while I was there, I could see why they said so. In the course of a day, I was with Group A for breakfast, then swimming in the pool with Group B, checked in with Group A as they were going kayaking, before I went to check on Group C, who were staying in the villas. By the time the sun was going down, I was hanging out with Group D. The day ended with Groups A, B, C, D and E eating dinner altogether, and then dancing altogether, where I mostly chatted with Group B, danced with groups B and C, and left with groups A and E.
Those were arbitrarily generalized, of course, but you get the gist.
But then there are those times when one of the guys wraps his arm around a girl's shoulder because he doesn't like me talking to her. There is that time when they will tell you to go get some rest, and that tomorrow is a big day, instead of letting you join in with their fun late at night. There are times when they will move away from you without inviting you to come along, times when they will place their hand beyond their plate to demonstrate that they don't want to share their food, times when they will close the door in your face, turn on the television, or even fall asleep right in front of you 'cause they don't want to talk to you any longer.
It confuses me, the game of social interaction. I still don't have my answer, my defined place, after spending seven days with my classmates. I suppose I'll never know, now that we won't be seeing each other much anymore, but change is the essence of life itself.
Like I said, my closest friends outside our school's graduation class of 2009 are all similar to me, in that they find it hard to fit in with the people they go to school with. Somehow, I have managed to form a community of people that I trust and love and care about that stretches to the UK and back. All I need is them, and I'll try to talk about them more this summer, 'cause they're very interesting people.
In the end, it doesn't really matter that I'm not in the center of attraction, or antipathy, or attention in general. All that matters is that I have people that I hold memories with that will make me smile wherever and whenever I'm not happy, and that will teach me that life is, actually, kind of alright.
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