F is for Friend

I don’t have any coherent plan  for this one, I’m afraid it’s going to be just a stream of consciousness collection of random thoughts on Friends and Friendship.

First of all this… Why does candy need FRIENDS?

 

Up next…this abomination.  I never liked it and I’m glad it’s over. Seriously, HOW did these horrible people afford those apartments, those clothes, those HAIRCUTS and all that coffee?

 

I was fairly normal growing up – we had a little gang, the 2 Ds, J, S and me. We were friends, we played together, gossiped together, decided on a weekly basis (by some mysterious internal algorithm) which one of us would be out – ‘we hate her’. Then when it was time for high school, our little school was  commingled  with another school and there was a whole new dynamic.

The Ds fell away, each making her own friends from among these ‘new’ kids,  J got a SERIOUS boyfriend and that was the last we saw of her,  S got in with the ‘artsy’ crowd, and I split my time between the Brains and the Dopers. Good times! Then college.

Looking back, I can see that this was one of those turning points where, had I gone a different route, while I certainly wouldn’t be who I am today (whether for better or worse, is left to the reader to decide), but I think I might  have had a smoother, happier road. I SHOULD have gone to a school closer to home, or teamed up with someone (probably one of the Brains, rather than the Dopers) and gone together somewhere.

Instead I went to a university over 900 miles from home, alone. I rarely came home again, and when I did, I didn’t look up my high school friends. Well, once I visited one of the Ds, but we had nothing in common. I was full of myself, and she was full of her husband’s child – it was an awkward and uncomfortable hour for both of us.

At the university, I made friends, but honestly – those years are pretty much a blur to me now. When I changed majors from Sociology to Geology, I stopped hanging with those people. When Geology was no longer within my grasp (damn you, calculus) and Philosophy became the new goal, it came with a new set of ‘friends’. Then I left school, and never saw any of them again.

It’s been the same pattern my entire life. After school, the military – where friendships that last a lifetime are alleged to be forged. Not so for me. Then a few jobs, at which I SEEMED to be having friends… we talked, we hung out, we socialized. But as I left each job, I left the friends that came with it.

I now have no “friendships” older than my current job. Am I broken?

 

Written as part of the April 2015 A to Z Challenge.