First Journal Strangeness
1/7/01 00:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienThis is going to be a nice, long, rambling journal about absolutely nothing. Please remember to take the word 'normal' with a grain of salt. I sometimes use it as a real word, and sometimes smirk when I say or think it.
I feel like I've accomplished something today - I cleaned my room, am helping program a game, and finished two sculptures, one of which is for a friend- we're doing a sculpture trade.
At the same time, though I've added thought and art to the world, I don't feel as if I've done much of anything. Perhaps it's from too much thinking. I do that. I think too much. I know I do. I've had others tell me I do; yet I can't seem to stop it. It's an addictive habit, like smoking or alcoholisim, and sometimes just as destructive. It's all going on inside your head, though, so unless you let others know about it, it's much less obvious.
One of my friends from highschool, Tanya, moved away on Monday, to Long Island. I hate the city. I don't know if I'll see her much again, though I'd like to. The night she moved, I was over at her house. Tanya, my best friend Evelyn, and I, drove around. It was fine, until Tanya wanted to go see Amy.
Amy is my ex-best friend. Suffice it to say that my highschool senior year would have been much, much nicer had not Amy been there to be a part of it. I hadn't talked to her in 6 months, and had been much more mentally and emotionally healthy for it. Evelyn feels the same way about Amy I do, but less strongly - she was never really friends with her.
But Tanya wanted to go and say goodbye. And who were Evelyn and I to tell our friend, "no, you can't go, we don't want you to?"
So there I was. We sat there and they talked for an hour. I watched TV most of the time, and felt an immense sense of relief when it was time to do.
We went back to Tanya's house, said goodbyes and exchanged new addresses, then left. I snapped at my mother on the way home, and when we were at my house, when I was trying to apologize for snapping at her earlier. Evelyn even said I was acting "wierder than normal." I think it was a combination of Tanya leaving, and seeing Amy again, and realizing even though I hate her with a firey passion, in some sick way, I still miss her.
Yup. I do think too much.
So, this makes, what, five friends at home. Five.
Does this strike you as an unreasonably small number, especially since one of the four is in med school in Pakistan (Paskistan, for God's sake) and I only see her for one month, in the summer, now?
I don't know. But it seems small to me. Some of my college friends say that they only had one or two friends in highschool, whom they really didn't like that much, so I feel like an idiot for complaining, when it seems as if many had it worse off. But I look at other people, who constantly seem to have around them an attitude of 'I'm cool. Be my friend,' and it seems to me that I've never got that.
I've got the one which says, 'I'm odd. Avoid me.' Or, alternately, the one which says, 'if you have no one else to be your friend, I'm pretty desperate. Try being friends with me.' I call it the 'wierdo magnet,' affectionately. But it bothers me, at times.
Like now, for instance.
Why do I have more friends online than in real life? Why do my parents keep insisting that these people are not 'real' friends, or even 'real people' at all? I was instant messaging someone the other day, and my mom said, 'why don't you go talk to your real friends?' This disturbed me, in two different ways at the same time.
One, because they cannot see that these people are important to me, just as friends a few miles' drive away are.
One, because these friends are as important to me as RL friends, and I cannot really be there for them. If they are sick and live halfway across the country, I can't hop in my car and bring them soup. If they are depressed, the only thing I can do is talk to them. Not good, when what they really want is hugs and tissues.
And why, oh why, does this wierdo magnet principle also apply to my online friends?
You'd think that, just once in my life, I could meet a so-called 'normal person.' I can't.
This fact makes me unhappy, sometimes, when I worry late at night about friends and about the effects they have on my psyche, even if they're half a world away.
What scares me more is that I've tried to meet normal people, I've tried to be normal (partly out of curiosity, partly because I think it made my parents happier), and failed. Not to mention the fact that I was vastly unhappy being normal, as opposed to sometimes unhappy being abnormal.
Does this mean that I am, in all truth, a normal person? Or is there something wrong with me?
I feel like I've accomplished something today - I cleaned my room, am helping program a game, and finished two sculptures, one of which is for a friend- we're doing a sculpture trade.
At the same time, though I've added thought and art to the world, I don't feel as if I've done much of anything. Perhaps it's from too much thinking. I do that. I think too much. I know I do. I've had others tell me I do; yet I can't seem to stop it. It's an addictive habit, like smoking or alcoholisim, and sometimes just as destructive. It's all going on inside your head, though, so unless you let others know about it, it's much less obvious.
One of my friends from highschool, Tanya, moved away on Monday, to Long Island. I hate the city. I don't know if I'll see her much again, though I'd like to. The night she moved, I was over at her house. Tanya, my best friend Evelyn, and I, drove around. It was fine, until Tanya wanted to go see Amy.
Amy is my ex-best friend. Suffice it to say that my highschool senior year would have been much, much nicer had not Amy been there to be a part of it. I hadn't talked to her in 6 months, and had been much more mentally and emotionally healthy for it. Evelyn feels the same way about Amy I do, but less strongly - she was never really friends with her.
But Tanya wanted to go and say goodbye. And who were Evelyn and I to tell our friend, "no, you can't go, we don't want you to?"
So there I was. We sat there and they talked for an hour. I watched TV most of the time, and felt an immense sense of relief when it was time to do.
We went back to Tanya's house, said goodbyes and exchanged new addresses, then left. I snapped at my mother on the way home, and when we were at my house, when I was trying to apologize for snapping at her earlier. Evelyn even said I was acting "wierder than normal." I think it was a combination of Tanya leaving, and seeing Amy again, and realizing even though I hate her with a firey passion, in some sick way, I still miss her.
Yup. I do think too much.
So, this makes, what, five friends at home. Five.
Does this strike you as an unreasonably small number, especially since one of the four is in med school in Pakistan (Paskistan, for God's sake) and I only see her for one month, in the summer, now?
I don't know. But it seems small to me. Some of my college friends say that they only had one or two friends in highschool, whom they really didn't like that much, so I feel like an idiot for complaining, when it seems as if many had it worse off. But I look at other people, who constantly seem to have around them an attitude of 'I'm cool. Be my friend,' and it seems to me that I've never got that.
I've got the one which says, 'I'm odd. Avoid me.' Or, alternately, the one which says, 'if you have no one else to be your friend, I'm pretty desperate. Try being friends with me.' I call it the 'wierdo magnet,' affectionately. But it bothers me, at times.
Like now, for instance.
Why do I have more friends online than in real life? Why do my parents keep insisting that these people are not 'real' friends, or even 'real people' at all? I was instant messaging someone the other day, and my mom said, 'why don't you go talk to your real friends?' This disturbed me, in two different ways at the same time.
One, because they cannot see that these people are important to me, just as friends a few miles' drive away are.
One, because these friends are as important to me as RL friends, and I cannot really be there for them. If they are sick and live halfway across the country, I can't hop in my car and bring them soup. If they are depressed, the only thing I can do is talk to them. Not good, when what they really want is hugs and tissues.
And why, oh why, does this wierdo magnet principle also apply to my online friends?
You'd think that, just once in my life, I could meet a so-called 'normal person.' I can't.
This fact makes me unhappy, sometimes, when I worry late at night about friends and about the effects they have on my psyche, even if they're half a world away.
What scares me more is that I've tried to meet normal people, I've tried to be normal (partly out of curiosity, partly because I think it made my parents happier), and failed. Not to mention the fact that I was vastly unhappy being normal, as opposed to sometimes unhappy being abnormal.
Does this mean that I am, in all truth, a normal person? Or is there something wrong with me?
Normal
23/9/01 20:48 (UTC)Evelyn
Re: Normal
21/10/01 21:41 (UTC)