I’ve always known the difference between being acceptable and being weird. As far as I can remember, I have known what I should be doing and how I should be acting to what will ultimately be social suicide. How many other six year olds can recall making friends because they have to and not because they want to?
It’s not that friends never interested me because they did. People did. The way they interacted with each other, the jokes that they shared, the moments of happiness and sadness and the way that they would confide in each other. Craving that kind of relationship with another person was the hardest part of growing up, because I wanted it but there was never anyone that I could trust. I tried multiple times through my school years to find those people, but instead I would take as the silent other that would just listen, advise and be there for the people that trusted me. I was always so trustworthy and as much as I wished the feeling was mutual, I could never reciprocate since I knew too much.
I had tried multiple times to do exactly that – to completely break down my wall of security and to let people in. The first time being in year ten, and ever since then I’ve wished day after day that I had never done that. I knew that it was going to be my first “heartbreak” (I never liked that word, my heart was fine, I was just a little sad and confused) but I never knew the implications it would cause me in the long-term. Saying that, it was the first time I called a thing a relationship because he came to my concert and drank straight vodka with me afterwards. Romance isn’t dead. More on that later, though.
Ever since I can fully remember, my relationships with people have been a strange, tangled feeling that I could never make sense of. It was terrifying to be a part of something where I couldn’t predict the outcome and I took to a multitude of different personalities and molded them together into what I believed was likeable and acceptable. I wish I could say that this isn’t the case anymore, but it’s still a vital part of me and in the times that I’ve let that wall of security drop, my insecurities begin to surround me, engulfing me like a bone crunching snake that makes my chest feel tight and my oxygen levels lowering. Just like that sentence.
I won’t lie, friends have given me unforgettable memories. A lot of the time, people in my shoes say that they would much rather be alone, but not for me. I surrounded myself in their company and I enjoyed it. I envied the ones who were close-knit and I would find myself judging those friendships – would they or would they not be friends outside of school? Would they think of each other time and time again? I want to boast about how I was correct about most of them, but I also hate to admit that my school hours were spent pondering those kinds of things.
Writing this now, I wasted a huge portion of my life thinking. Everybody thinks, all day, every day. Here’s the difference – instead of plain thinking, I was overthinking. The past, the present, the future. I would analyse every single move a person would make; every facial expression meant something to me. If the tone of their voice was slightly lowered or monotone, I backed away and rethought my strategy. It got worse once I took to social media, where people took advantage of online talking rather than talking in real life. Where abbreviating words became popular and conversations turned mundane. A one word reply and I would spend the next hour wondering what I did wrong, what was it about me that didn’t interest anyone.
The truth is, I have always been stuck in a state of nostalgia. I don’t mean past-nostalgia either. Imagining the future of yourself and others around you is a kind of nostalgia if you think about it – you may not know the true outcome of what’s going to happen but you can have a good guess. My life is a state of imaginary happenings, past happenings and I-wish-it-would-happen.
***unfinished. expect edits & more content to be added later***
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