friends

I've come to the realization that friends are harder to make as you get older. When you're a kid, you meet another kid, you push some girl over together, and bam! You're friends. When you're older, people already have their friends, social orders get more complex, suddenly it's not as easy. Right now I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I really need a good friend.

My best friend of 6 years got married this last summer and I hardly ever see him anymore and I don't really have many other friends in Dallas. Almost all the friends I had in high school are away at school or in different parts of their life and I don't see them anymore. I have my family but in most cases family isn't really the same thing as friends. Friends can talk about anything, friends understand what makes the other person tick, friends have similar interests and similar views on life. My brother Spencer and my sister Maretta are who I spent most of my time with growing up in my family and Spencer has been in Utah for a majority of the last few years and Maretta has been as well, and recently got married and moved to Philadelphia for the next 4 years. I'm striving with connect with my other older brother Scott but he's married with a kid and is starting up a new business still and so his schedule is pretty busy.

Over the last 6-7 months I gradually been getting to know a lot of people through means of an online game, World of Warcraft. I play with a few of my friends, and have met many more people that I would call friends, but what do you do when you start to realize that the people you thought were friends actually don't respect you at all and consider you beneath them because you haven't been playing the game as long as they have and don't have as much 'experience'. Where I used to really enjoy socializing with most of these people I've met online, chatting or over vent, over the last few weeks I've been coming to the realization that a lot of them probably don't consider me as a friend, just a 'friend rank'. Which has come as devastating news to me, because before I started school this fall I didn't have much other opportunity to socialize, so these people were about the extent of my friends, but now I feel like I have been setting myself up for disappointment. Even my friend Max who I've known for years and years, sometimes treats me that way in-game. I don't blame him, he's supposed to be the leader of this guild, or social network, and feels obligated to maintain order amongst everyone. It just sucks he's in that position because he's one of the few friends online that I could fall back on, and I can't even do that sometimes because I know he can't fairly take my side. Whatever...

Friends just come so naturally when you're younger that you never really learn HOW to make friends. I go back and think how you make friends, by finding a common interest. Well...one common interest that is easily found in almost any guy is video games, which now that I think about it is one of the great benefits of video games. It's really how I've made many of my friends in the past. Also and more recently, sports, also found in most guys. But depending on the situation it's kind of difficult to genuinely steer conversation towards these topics. I'm also learning that school is one of the harder environments to make the transition from 'classmate' to 'out-of-class friend'. Lucky for me I'm an introvertive person and am usually happy with 1-2 good friends. Thats why it's never been a problem until my friend William got married, and that's a whole other mess by itself, but it leaves me suddenly feeling friendless. Or maybe more specifically, best-friendless. It's important for people to have a best friend, and not just someone they consider a best friend, but someone who considers you a best friend back. To be one of the most important people in someone's life, and be the same to that person. Mutual friendship.

I've been trying to befriend some people at school but it doesn't happen quickly, if at all. There's two girls in my math class that I sit between, Jennifer and Amber. Both are cute girls and have a lot of energy and personality. My first thought at that point was "hey maybe I can hook up with one of these two" but now that I'm realizing I just need a friend, that's my only goal at this point. But how do you make a friend out of a girl anyways? And why isn't there a better term for non-intimate male/female friends anyways? I used to have a female friend a few years back, and it was awesome. We joked back and forth, had a lot of the same attitudes towards things, had a lot of fun times, and there's just something confidence building about hanging out with a hot girl who you're important to, even if it's in a non-intimate way. Turns out that girl got too comfortable with me being a generally nice person and started taking advantage of my generosity, using me if you will. Chauffeur, fast food, TV/internet, whatever. She went off to college (in Dallas still) and we stopped talking, or rather I stopped making effort to get together with her and since she had never really made any effort to begin with, we just stopped talking.

So this girl Jennifer, she's got a boyfriend which is kind of discouraging, but she's pretty, funny, and interesting. We talk a lot in class and I've gotten to know a lot about her, but I'm afraid the end of the semester will come and that'll be that, we don't really see each other again. Given my need of friends, I would hate to have that happen. So I wonder how you create a friendship with a girl knowing you can't use any kind of chemistry to help the friendship along. That's what I used with the first girl I was talking about, we probably would've hooked up at some point and I think the feelings were there from both of us at one time or another, but we never got the timing right. So do I start by asking this girl to do something outside of class? I've already done that, we've gotten together to study outside of class, but we still mainly talk about what we're working on. So do I just ask if she wants to grab some lunch on campus or something? Will she take that as me asking her on a date? Indeed it essentially is the same thing, just different motives, but it may be hard for her to differentiate those motives. Bunch of questions I'm just asking myself really lol, need to ask someone who can maybe give an answer.

In any case, that's my lament. At this point in my life I feel like I could do with a few good friends, since I recently 'lost' my best friend. I'll make due with what I can though.

And ps for anyone who might be reading, this isn't a cry for help it's just me logging my feelings. This is my journal first and foremost, then an outlet media.


::EDIT:: I was kind of emotional when I wrote this and realize that impromptu writing, at least for me, produces very unorganized writing. This entry was all over the place.