Interesting self-observation

[Guest guest]

I just had a rather interesting, if minor, epiphany about how I view

friendship.

I tend to attach a past tense to it. It has not always been this way,

but it is now.

I think of myself now as someone who has (and requires) no friends, even

though that is not, on the surface, accurate. At the very least, the

woman whom is staying here with me is a friend. I consider Jerry

(Newport) my friend, and certainly I have " online " friends. However, my

internal definition of " friend " as applied to those people is different

than what I consider to be the most accurate definition of " friend. "

" Friend, " to me, in the trust sense, the one of the past tense, refers

to the kinds of relationships I had with my last two close friends, Don

and Shane, as well as with several others before that. Both of those

friendships terminated, as did every other of my " true " friendships. As

those friendships terminated, so did my concept of myself as a true

participant in a reciprocal friendship.

" Friend " is synonymous with something that existed with relationships

such as those. Something that will probably elude my efforts to capture

its essence with words, but real and nearly palpable regardless. I have

not had it since, and although I think wistfully of the good times that

defined what it meant to have and be a friend, I have no specific desire

to have that again. It is a lot like some people describe happy events

in childhood; they think fondly of them, sometimes with a touch of

melancholy over the loss of youth and innocence, but they do not speak

(seriously) of wishing to return to that time. That which is in the

past must stay in the past, and there is no going back.

There are a lot of things in my life like this. One example that fairly

leaps into my mind is the time I had while living in the dorms at Cal

Poly Pomona, where I first attended college. That year and a quarter

will most likely retain its status as the best time in my life, for the

rest of my life. If I could live my whole life, whatever time it is

that I am going to have on this planet, within those 1.25 years, I would

be at the zenith of what it means to be happy. But I know that I could

never go back and recreate what it was that made it special. I'm not

the same " me " that I was then, and even if somehow all external events

could be twisted back to the way they were (from my perspective) in

1990-1991, I would not be the same, and that which was the best time

ever would not be so for me now.

As such, when I think and reminisce and live in the echoes of that time

that are burned into my memory, I experience (along with the pleasant

memories of a good time) a wistful yearning for what I have lost... not

just in circumstance, but in myself. And it's not even about lost youth

for me... lost hair perhaps, but I feel as youthful as I ever did,

emotionally and otherwise. I dare say that I have not matured any

significant amount since then... I may have even gone retrograde in that

way.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time " living in the past. " Not a

long and distant past... often this past was only one or two years

prior, but even then, I recognized that there was no going back. To try

to do so would be play-acting, in the role of me as I was back then,

which is not what I was doing the first time round. I have always known

that I could never go back, and that realization is the source of the

" bitter " in the bitter-sweet sensation I get when I reminisce.

That is the exact dynamic that is in place when I think of the concept

of " friend. " I have an innate sense that I had a capability for

friendship (as evidenced by having true friends) that I lack now. I

don't miss my former friends, except for fleeting moments here and

there, and even then it is a relatively minor kind of thing. Nor do I

miss having friends, per se, except when I need someone to perform a

given task for me (like take me to the auto repair shop to pick up my car).

When I think back, I see vignettes of my life... a series of moments in

time, and each evokes more memories, those that were associated with the

initial one. Some of these trigger emotional responses. My memory of

many of these events is vivid, including the sights, sounds, smells of

the moment. So, too, are the emotions. While I generally don't like to

revel in emotion, I cannot always resist it, and with past events, the

most comforting kind (because I know how they all turn out), the

temptation is often far too much for me to withstand.

I have a lot of " good old days " syndrome. There was a joke somewhere...

the reason that the good old days were so good is because no one

remembers how bad they were anymore. Time tends to sanitize my memories

to a degree. Even bad times can trigger the melancholic longing in me

sometimes, and this happens even when I know that the times were not so

good. Ultimately, the past is nice for me because it never changes, and

it never gives me unpleasant surprises. Since I am the one doing the

remembering, I can pick and choose which events I want to relive; I can

skip the ones that were less than fully pleasant, and make a nice quilt

of time that doesn't seem like it has big holes in it, even though it

obviously does.

That same thing is how I see friends, and how I see myself in terms of

ability and desire to be social. I have never wanted friends, per se; I

have had them, but it was never because I made a concerted effort to go

obtain them. The friendships just happened, in the course of living.

Obviously, I was open to friendship when circumstances permitted, and

the unique people with whom I became friends were able to tolerate

someone that was pretty strange. Now, I am not open to friendship like

I was, and I don't want to be. As is the recurring motif in this

letter, there is no going back. And I am not sad about that. While I

may sometimes dwell in the past and relive events as I remember them, I

am always aware that, in my memories, I am the person as I was when the

things happened, not the person I am now. In my memory, I can go back

to the way things were; in real life, I cannot. As such, the way that I

was becomes little more than a curiosity, when I pull out of my internal

world where my past is the present.