sandy eggo
I started out trying to write coherently, to write “well”. Well, what does writing “well” mean? It means stopping to think. But part of the reason why I don’t write as much as I did once upon a time is because I think I think too much. I don’t write enough, I think more than enough. I think and think and think. So stop thinking.
I find it’s harder to talk about here when I am here. This place in which I live most of the year for this blink of a lifetime that I don’t know how to describe. How do I feel about this place, and why? Why can’t I simply love it like I’ve loved every other place I’ve been? Probably because of the extended permanence of my residence here; not just here for a day or even month or two, or a season, but for longer than I can or will spend anywhere else right now.
When I’m here I feel a mix of love and loneliness. Currently the only place I can have complete freedom in my life, but only due to the fact that nobody cares enough to give a flying fish about what I do. How self-centered of me. I don’t like a place simply because there aren’t as many people who care for me as anywhere else I want to be? The fact that I don’t feel like, outside of one person, I really have any connection with anyone within a hundred miles? Sure, I love people here, and I like people here, but none of us are close enough to do anything about it.
And that’s the sad part. That’s the sad part about growing up, really growing up– the fact that even though we get to live with people we wouldn’t get to live with before, and meet people we wouldn’t meet otherwise, we don’t get to see them enough to really develop any kind of lasting bond, unless we really make them a priority. With so much freedom, we oftentimes must make ourselves the only priority, to take care of ourselves in this place our families can’t. It’s not like primary or secondary school, when we could see our friends and classmates every day. This was both boon and bane back then because we would have to see the people we might have extended histories or turbulent and traumatizing pasts with every single day with no choice. But it also breeds the friendship of circumstance, the necessary friendship that buds from seeing someone every day and sitting next to them, however shaky, it is inevitable and yet, as we grow older, just because we knew these people when we were young, we actually think of them with more sweetness and sentiment than our friends we met recently, because they represent our tender youth even if that youth was painful and bleak.
Those people we meet and befriend in our childhoods, however fickle back then, often turn out to be the friends that last our entire lifetimes. The ones we didn’t necessarily pick ourselves.
That’s serendipity. That’s yuanfen. That’s life.
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tags: friendship, honesty
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January 6th, 2010 at 00:15
Whether you find yourself thinking too much or not, please know that I think you are an amazing writer.
Seriously. I really enjoyed this entry.
Alicia’s last blog: …it’s out…
January 6th, 2010 at 00:58
I think you’ve seriously just spoke every word that I wanted to speak out with…it’s beautiful what you wrote here and very true.
The friendships and the relationships that are the most meaningful and lasting to us are the ones that have gone through so many ranges of emotions – joyful to traumatically depressing. Because that is what makes a relationship…memorable and profound, that is what grants it meaning.
It is the same thing with life, life is only profound and meaningful when experienced with a wide range of emotions, that is true happiness and satisfaction…to experience the colorful elements of life…to embrace the things that moves your soul in outstanding ways…
If friendships and relationships are meant to be imperfect, then being imperfect with the people within them is the perfect relationship itself.
Thank you for this.
Steven’s last blog: A Whole New World – Persist Your Resolutions with Me
January 6th, 2010 at 01:55
After reading this, I’m left wondering what your perfect world would be, i.e. what you’d ideally like your friends or people around you to do or be like in order to make you happy.
I ask because I would personally be perfectly content with no friends and solely a romantic relationship. It seems like you have both (to some extent) and yet you are still not happy. So, what would it take? What are you still looking for? Be explicit, please– I’m curious.
January 6th, 2010 at 01:56
Good entry. I agree. *not good with words*
Lisa’s last blog: holidays
January 6th, 2010 at 02:24
@Neil: I am happy. I may not be euphoric or ecstatic all the time, but I am happy, and incredibly grateful that I’ve reached such happiness.
I admit I am sometimes unsatisfied, especially at school, and I struggle to like this area, simply out of reasons such as: transportation is difficult– the entire “city” is spread out with highways and uninhabited land in-between, meaning spending more gas to drive through nowhere to get someplace; as a result, I feel less inclined to drive, especially when considering the environmental impact of my gas-powered car; at the same time, I feel trapped within school and the small area in which I live.
Simply put, I miss home sometimes. I would not want to stay there forever, but I like the culture, the people, BART, the area, the parks.
And I don’t really have any close friends here, either. Which is exactly what this post is about; the difficulty I find in cultivating friendships here that actually last, that aren’t shallow. I actually would feel better if I were completely alone than if I were with people whom I find wonderful yet.. something crucial is missing. The willingness to be open, maybe. Or perhaps I’m overexaggerating the difficulty of finding friends here; it’s probably just me.
But at home, I can ask to hang out with people whom I’ve only met a couple times, and they will be willing to drive an hour away to pick me up. Or someone who used to be mean to me in middle school but now wants to watch a movie with me. It’s not that being here is hard, it just happens that being home is easier. (Easier obviously isn’t always better, though, and in fact being a little uncomfortable is good, to force me to change.. still, sometimes I just feel an emptiness that even I don’t really understand.)
I do realize I’m blaming a lot of outside factors on my own inability to develop close friendships here. So, what am I still looking for? I’m looking for a friend. Simple as that. Sure, my standards (for just about anything, really) may be ridiculously high. But I’d just like a friend I can feel comfortable talking about anything with and who’d be open to do anything. Someone who’s in the middle of introverted and extroverted. Most people I meet are one extreme or the other. I would like a friend.. but sometimes they’re just so hard to find.
January 6th, 2010 at 13:38
Without a choice…. or fate. Your pick.
January 6th, 2010 at 20:11
You know oddly enough I was just thinking about this in the morning as I got ready for class. Gain some lose some, life. D:
Chenxi’s last blog: twenty ten
January 6th, 2010 at 20:37
yes indeed.. you are such a good writer!!++
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