Friends

I am not much of a social person.
Well, kinda-
I'm weird when it comes to identifying what kind of social I am.

Technically one could classify me as some sort of an anti-social person, and they wouldn't legit be wrong. I usually keep to myself, and would rather stay in one place if I can help it, playing games and drawing, watching YouTube, the likes.

But, I love chatting with others, sharing ideas, having goofs and laughs, pondering the existence of the universe, plotting to take over the world, getting deep about lore from our various interests, etc. It's fun to hang out with someone that can understand you, and sometimes it's more fun to share different points of views to get to that understanding. I find people to be very interesting. I want to like them.

Which is why it sucks that a majority of them make it so damn hard to do.

Here's a little fun fact about me: I have the ability to be really judgmental if I feel like it. I don't like using it, but whether it's through the way they present themselves or how they interact with the world, if it seems like something's off, I tend to notice. And let me tell you, if I am the one noticing, it's a problem.

Granted, I'm exaggerating this a bit. Both sides. A majority of people are just like us, trying to survive in this world, dealing with the clumps of soulless or idiotic individuals, and I am not that harsh with judgements. Despite the state that the world is in right now, I can't help but have hope. I try to follow the realist idea: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

But I still struggle to befriend the people that I do like. I feel like I've gotten better at handling the mask I use to present myself in the public world. I feel more comfortable than I used to, too. I can be friendly with a lot of people, and it takes a lot more effort to get under my skin, which can't seem to be said about the rest of my generation. I just struggle with connection, and keeping in touch.

I feel like part of me makes forming friendships a slog. Whether that's the actual case, or if it's just my impatience, I am unsure. Some people can form friendships faster than I can, and there might've been a case or two where I was considered a friend by someone who I only considered as an acquaintance. Can't remember much about it, but that's how it feels.

I wonder if it's because of my childhood. I never had many friends. I still had them, but it was a select few that I was friends with. There's also the fact that, at certain parts of my life, I have drifted away from them. No malice behind it, no "I don't want to be friends" kind of message. It just seems to fade away. I get that life is constantly drifting people back and forth, and sometimes rockets them at high speeds to god knows where, but I still get saddened by it. I seem to lose more friends than I can make.

It's gotten to the point where I really want to be someone's friend, right now, but also my brain knows at some point there will be a parting. I worry that it might be because they get to move onto better parts of their lives, meanwhile I'm always in my cozy rut, mostly constant in who I am and what I do. Making close friendships takes time, and I've just about run out of close friends, and since it's been ages since I've had to use my friend-making skills, I worry that I seem to be speedrunning the friendship process.

It could be that I just feel lonely. This world seems to try its best to force us apart these days, and as a more benign and neutral person, I just get left behind while everyone else is throwing daggers and launching nukes at each other.

But let me tell you, sometimes life works in strange ways. It strives for balance, and we have stayed on this end for too long, so it is currently doing its best to force us away from this apex.

It does this in many areas. I can't claim to understand what scale the universe uses, but I know for sure it doesn't take good and evil into account, because we as a species made that. This scale works on all scales of everything. From causing or preventing natural disasters in certain places, to something as small as reconnecting some guy to a friend of his.

It is rare for me to get a second chance at reconnecting with someone. It's probably happened about two times previously with me, out of the guestimated 10+ friends that I've had over the years, and even those eventually got lost to time as well. I have a good feeling about this time, though.