Elementary Alliances – Part 3
Everyone was making friends but me. Derek played basketball with other kids, Oscar hung out with the Mexican socialites and Pedro bounced around between groups, always the social butterfly. But I never learned. Any friendships I’ve ever made have been initiated by the other person, a fluke or we were introduced. It’s not that I don’t know how, at least on an intellectual level, I do. It’s that I can’t. My brain calls the plays, but my body can’t execute it. It goes through all the options and throws a left-handed pass into triple coverage.
We were drifting further and further apart and I knew it. I tried to keep the group together, but middle-school drift was too much. That, combined with growing tensions in the group and a fight between Derek me put us over the edge.
Our group dispersed and only Pedro and me still hung out. It was a loose connection, though. I chased after him a lot, he didn’t reciprocate. I’d tell him to meet me at this table or in the cafeteria at lunch. I’d go there and eat my chips and drink my soda. The only company I had was Sally. I’d talk with her and watch my classmates socialize.
They make it seem so fucking easy. I’m 19 now, everyone my age is so… tall, independent, composed, autonomous. The guys have fucking beards for chrisakes. I’m still having my nose blown and my drool sucked out by my fucking parents. How… how the hell am I supposed to be one of the guys? Protect a girl? I still don’t belong. Somewhere along the line I missed some important lesson, I got left behind, and that was what I felt like back then.
“Friendship is a two-way street,” Sally would say.
“What?”
“You can’t have a friendship where only one person does all the work.”
I’d roll my eyes and go look for Pedro after waiting for half an hour out of a 45-minute lunch. I’d go look for him all over the school and find him in front of the lunch line. Not IN the lunch line, in front of it. Talking with people and trying to get someone to buy him lunch.
“Hey man, I was just about to go over there.”
I would nod along and smile and pretend everything was okay. This went on for a few months, with each time that it happened bringing with it a small realization of what was happening. Our friendship was no longer a two-way street.
I gradually stopped seeing or chasing him. I started having lunch alone. I learned to be entertained by just eating. Sally tried to get other kids to hang out with me, but I never knew what to say and I came across as a spoiled rich kid (what I was told). I eventually had to be home-schooled due to the beginnings of breathing and eating problems. I didn’t go to middle school again.
To Be Continueed…
March 2, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I feel your pain bro…though I would suggest just do what you feel is instinctively right and someone will find you interesting. Even if only yourself. Creativity is the key to the world.
Self-pity never got me very far – now: making myself laugh and others as a by-product created a different plane of existence with less doubt, less pain, less anger, less negativity…and more enjoyment. Try it sometime! Good luck.
March 2, 2009 at 11:41 pm
You write some hard stuff bro.
March 19, 2009 at 6:18 pm
“I still don’t belong. Somewhere along the line I missed some important lesson, I got left behind, and that was what I felt like back then.”
I disagree. You do belong. It is society that has wandered off. Or, the masses. Whatever you want to call most people. I have worked with people with disabilities and learned much from each person I worked with. That’s because you are a person, an individual with your own thoughts and your own identity just like every other person/individual with or without a disability. Grouping everyone with a certain ailment together doesn’t really work even if it’s an ailment that cannot yet be cured. I think the problem is really that most people do not take others as they are.
Excellent post, very well written. Keep ‘em coming.