I have never made friends in my life. I am in no way saying that I don't have friends. Just that I have never participated in the active process of making friends. The whole breadth of my life I have been gifted friends by circumstance. Not that I am under any impression that people venture deep into the jungle to find friends. I have never made a friend of my own.
Some friends have been given to me by mutual friends. That is the case with most of my friends. To be given to me doesn't just mean that I meet them and thing kick it off, these people more than not are prompted to be my friend. No matter how many times this ritual occurs, I don't feel guilt even though I should.
I have tried many times to no success at just meeting someone. It is an embarrassing short coming that I dwell on frequently. I find being shy to not be a quirky trait of mine, but a fundamental short coming. For me I find that this inadequacy is rooted in sociopathy. It is a form of labor to me, to listen to people who I am not already familiar. On the chance I have forced myself into a situation where I am maybe expected to speak, I prefer being silent. I find that I rather stand in the doorway just creeping rather than confronting.
I don't know if I live conflicted because of this. In the moment I am usually content with my situation, but when I can't take anymore I loathe having no where else to go. But that's maybe less conflict and just resenting the consequences of my lifestyle.
Relationships because of this are always strained. I have made a show of leaving every one I know out of frustration only to come pathetically crawling back in a month. In that month of exile, I try to make it on my own. To which I am quickly reminded of my complete inability to make new friends. And so it is that since 2016 when I started highschool I have maintained roughly the same friend group.
How this friend group was given to me was because I had made a discord server for a then fringe manwha called "Suicide Boy" authored by Parkgee. The server was mostly a place to facilitate the translation efforts to which I also contributed but I believe exclusively burdened. Being a server owner I was introduced to a lot of people, and those people having organized out of a 4chan thread were a very certain kind of character. A kind of terse and entitled character, but one who wants to be understood.
In no other circumstance would that many people wanted to talk to me. For a long time I felt guilty about that. I felt undeserving of attention, especially when the contributors to the project were right there. Now I don't really feel anything about it. Which I don't know if that's any better. People just kind of organize themselves like that, and the tribe elder will always have some buy in to most community activities.
That server has long outlived me. Staffed by unfamiliar names, and home to people who aren't familiar with mine. This anonymity has granted me a sense of security. I don't have to feel embarrassed because no one remembers. I have a tendency to dwell on the past; like all men. But to me it is compulsive to a degree that it interrupts my ability to live in the moment. I truly do miss being around all those people. Not just the community fame, but the moments shared in chats, calls listening to music, playing Minecraft in chunks of 48 hours.
Overtime this friend group has been eroded by the tides of egos, molestation, and drugs. what remains is only a loosely connected web of people who are held together less from cohesion and more from tension. I think that's maybe ok. Its ok to not like your friends. I do, but it is ok when I don't.
"The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better" Hey Jude
Friends can often outpace us. I think when friends move on from us, they go to heaven and live happily with where our childhood pets go.
A lot of media wants to validate us being happy with our friends no matter what. Describing the most trivial of connections as unbreakable bond. But maybe you shouldn't be happy with your friends; and certainly not all the time. When you are mad at your friends it shouldn't be the end either. I have a terrible problem with forgiving people, not because I am selfless, but because I don't care enough about them.
