talesofacollegedropoutnothing

[talesofacollegedropoutnothing]

Humans need people, we need engagement, we encourage friendship. I know these things and yet I feel like I don’t know friendship. My sister is one of the lucky ones, her best friend has known her since she was the tender age of 5. I cant imagine knowing a friend before they could read, watching someone similar to me grow into the adults they both are today. Once in a while, my sister and I, the only girls, would like to come together and discuss any past or current ongoing drama and gossip we may have had to share. Of course, we both had our fair share of friendship fallingouts to report back on, but once she said to me after bringing up a friend slightly backstabbing her with a boy that made me feel a little miserable and calm “I dont know what I would do if I didnt have my best friends”. Some girls are just like that they can keep a friend. I have never been like those girls, friendships to me are like a butterfly in a toddlers clamped hands. I desperately desire the wants to find a soulmate connection in the platonic way, slightly more than I desire romance. Even in the moments I do desire this romance, the romance is built on my vision of a beautiful friendship with heavy lust. Friendships calm me, and they drive me hysterical. I panic over them, and I dont care enough at all. I don’t want to hold these friendships close and carefully like an artifact because it’s something I yearn for. I yearn to feel like the protagonist feels at the end of a children’s movie when the childhood best friend they were drifting/bully/or even childhood best friend turned bully conflicts get resolved. The sweet and easiness of their childhood friendships didnt translate in real life. If there were friends, there was drama. This was of course made even worse by the patriarchy proclaiming that girls could not work alongside another and would always favour grovelling at the feet of the superior man amongst them. In my younger days, rarely did I ever witness a tone of snide or cruelty hidden from a girl in front of a boy, but as I hit my twenties, I met the most interesting friend. She was useful, as horrible as it is to say about friend she didnt come with nothing. She came with either alcohol and/or marijuana every time I would see her. She wouldnt bring it herself either, but I never realized until a desperate attempt to keep the party going I showed her a huge white wine bottle in my tote bag at 3 in the afternoon in a room on campus. The face she made, I laugh at my younger self’s amusement at being able to make people react with shock and worry, not knowing the friend in front of me was reacting with disgust. She gave looks of disgust to me many times throughout our friendship I began to try to get these reactions from her on the sly. A strong feminist, she was the only woman I’ve ever known to try to one up me in front of a man. I triggered insecurities in her and because I didnt like her tactics I decided to sneakily antagonize her by shining brighter. I had always played the people pleaser role to avoid pushing people away as a child and they would still choose to leave, my silly and willing attempts at maintaining this friendship with a girl who did not like me very much and I did not like her very much ended up with the friendship deteriorating all the same. Im still presently living this stage of my life but my early twenties before this moment of clarity and sobriety were marred by the evils of alcohol. An aggressive irrational person took over inside me completely opposite to the peaceful considerate version Ive tirelessly worked my adolescence to obtain. After the friendship halted, I continued to drink carelessly, I sent insulting messages to her that I knew would never be delivered because I was blocked off of everything while blacked out laughing to myself not realizing Id let her turn me into the joke. When I would tell people we weren’t friends anymore I would always fixate an early day in our friendship she said “theyre not that nice” when someone complimented my eyebrows. That told me everything, I heard nothing.

[talesofacollegedropoutnothing]

I woke up brushed my teeth, took my medicine, ate my vitamins, pulled my vape, checked my face, and stood up with nothing to do. No work, no school, no attachments, no friends, no hobbies, just endless of hours of free time for months. When you are in school, or working or constantly engaging with a friend group, time passes by slower. Suddenly your summer feels much like a neglected childhood summer where you lay around all day, beating the heat near a cheap fan and some electronic thats keeping you entertained. Summer is the hardest time to be alone. In winter, we know its okay to be alone the cold weather affirms the desire to pull away from others and fall under our heavy blankets. We can do this because we tell ourselves its okay to be alone in the cold, but by summer things would be different. Things are never different, the same lonely you were comforted by when it was cold enough outside to make your toes turn the prettiest shade of purple and fall off but now the same lonely is making your skin crawl like the sweat that drips uncomfortably slow down your neck.