It’s as messed up as it sounds.
I’ve spent the past two weeks staying with various friends in Cape Town. It’s my six-monthly going-away holiday, and now it’s over. This past week has been pretty hard for me. I cried for two days straight, and I’m not quite sure why. I even felt homesick at one point, which is odd because I never feel like that, and generally I’m fighting for more time away from the volume my family commands. However, this holiday I’ve come to realise that friends carry an equally loud volume, and leave you with even less alone time. How I have never noticed this before, I do not know or understand.
I am quite a loner. I’ve discovered that people actually make me pretty grumpy, and I’d rather just spend time one-on-one with a particular special person than chill with a whole group of friends. I used to think that I was more of an extrovert, but “science has proven over the last year….” (just kidding, it hasn’t proven anything to me) that I get irritated by the youth and immaturity, and closed-mindedness of all my friends and often my family too. Sometimes I just want a little smidgen of quiet. On Tuesday I curled up on the couch, put a pillow to my face and cried. For about an hour. My friends still don’t know about it, and yet I was right in front of them the whole time. They never seem to get what it’s like being lonely, or what it’s like to see a certain best friend after six months of not hearing from them at all and then not see them again, despite having the time, means and opportunity to do so. They think they know who I am, but they literally have no clue.
And here’s what I realised: I don’t trust their reactions, they’re still pretty immature, thoughtless, and often inconsiderate. I struggle big-time with that, and therefore I don’t share my life or myself with them, although I encourage them to share with me. Isn’t that a little messed up maybe? Their thoughts and problems fill their minds, and mine are often so much more overwhelming that I have to withdraw with fear of shocking them.
Surely, seeing as they’re my best friends, I should desire to spend all my time with them and tell them everything, but what I found out was that my boys, my two ‘brothers’ and Sam, are the only people I really want to be completely honest with and become closer to. They understand me and they are always willing to comfort me when I feel like crap. These three guys I have all met in the last year, and they understand me better, and allow me to understand them, in a way I have NEVER had with my preschool girl friends. That’s a little crazy, I know, but I just can’t do that with the girls I know.
Of Sorts 