Continuing along with the idea of communication and social media blackout I’m going to pen some thoughts on friendship. I feel really shit. My mother, the nurse, took my blood pressure. It’s low. I’m fine. But I think I’m basically too relaxed. Or I’ve been thrown to the opposite end of the heart beat spectrum. Before I left Melbourne I was physically manifesting signs of stress, I actually felt fine mentally apart from the insomnia, nightmares, night terrors (they’re different), fatigue and anxiety. That list is pretty long once you start listing it, do not be alarmed my dear readers. That’s why I came here. I still had my shit relatively together. Or maybe that’s just my hindsight letting me off easy like I was doing a good job. Anyway, I’m physically adjusting to not being in flight mode. Fixed it by fleeing.

My cousin gets buried tomorrow. I think the little death road bump put me back into hyper stress. Those were a few rough days but observing their approach to death and grief has been ameliorating. Lol to me- feels faint like may pass out constantly, still uses words like ameliorate. It’s the correct word. I wont change it to look dumber. We’re not on a date and you don’t have to pay for this. Fuck. I should have a little donate button. Except like no strangers read this and 100% I’m sure most of you HAVE bought me unemployment charity food and or beverages. Cheers!!!

I put myself in an ivory tower. Cause I am a princess. Nah. Princess factor currently low- I’m not even complaining about the Wi-Fi or fucking mosquito bites or fire ants. I’m prepped for survivor btw. Here I am in some far away place where I dictate the amount of access people have to me. And because of my means of communication, chiefly email, it makes me aware of how different that is to text. I’m losing the shape of my original thoughts. I wanted to talk about friendship.

So the email thing made me think about my friends. I was thinking about unlikely friendship or friendship that endures. In particular I’m thinking about a set of friends of mine that I’ve had since I was 17. Heaps of shit has happened since we were teenagers. And we’re still friends. Some of them chose the hard way, some of them chose the easy way but we’re still friends. And I think about what keeps a person in your life.

Maybe I can’t be friends with people that are judgmental. Maybe we don’t get along in the wild. Maybe like if we’re on the survivor desert island I spear their ass. I’m fucking native man. FIRE ANTS. So enduring friendship needs no judgment. That’s one. Another thread I noticed is that my enduring friends haven’t changed. Not their character. That friendship group I referenced from my 17-year-old days. One of them- terrible problems with mental health, drug addiction, sexuality. Made a lot of choices from pain. But he never changed. He was still kind and sweet and principled. Another one of my friends went from being the most wholesome kid you’ve ever known, didn’t drink or smoke always made sure my drunk ass got home, is now a latent alcoholic and borderline agoraphobic. Still makes sure my drunk ass gets home.  I know that both these people’s life choices didn’t change their character.

What does it mean to have a consistent character and when do we develop who we are? That makes me nervous that we are and we are not the sum of our character. I do believe in the potential to change your character but at the same time I think that you do inherently have traits that manifest. You can’t fake kindness. I have no idea how one would develop that trait if you weren’t raised kind.

Just to bring up my ex bf (again) he had no long standing friends and I thought that this was really weird. Maybe not everyone has the privileges that I do; my best friend and I have been best friends since prep. That’s solid man. But if we take him as a case study cause yes I admit I have spent a lot of my time trying to understand the ugliness of his humanity. Hi babe. I hate you. I went through a long period of self-reflection where I really questioned ‘am I awful?’ Conclusion- I’m not awful. And you know why? Because my true friends are some of the best people I know. Word. Each one of them has qualities I admire be it: thoughtfulness, intelligence, patience, respect, loyalty, kindness, honesty, heaps of shit. People like that don’t have awful friends. Ergo I am not awful. The mind reels. Life hack- always try keep the people that improve you around. They are making you better dumbass. Even if it’s against your dumbass will. (Remind me i want to talk about the hierarchy of friendship. this is structurally a mess.)

It seems that the measure I’m using for human decency and true friendship is directly correlated against my ex bf. But I learned so much and it’s such a waste of information and writing material if I don’t use it. So he has no long-standing close friends and it didn’t appear that he was able to maintain any consistent friendship groups. I never got it, he could easily make friends and  be accepted quickly into these groups but he couldn’t keep them. If you are constantly changing who you are because you do not know your character then you will never have a true friend because people can’t trust that. Maybe that’s why it was so brutal in the end, I just didn’t know who he was apart from a reflection of the man he thought I wanted him to be. That’s so sad. Ew- No, I wont show you compassion. Not today Satan.

I realised that one of the things I like about myself is that I am the same person to all the people I know. I’m not calling anyone fake. I know that people want to be liked and sometimes it’s insecurity or whatever that drives them to adapt to social situations. I don’t have that skill. I can’t adapt to be liked (and I’m finally remembering that). You either like me or you don’t. If you don’t, move on. There’s billions of people in the world and your opinion of me does not matter- I care that I’m a person worthy of the friends I admire.

Okay, so I am being both harsh and bitter basket. I had a think about it. And maybe it’s we don’t like when people change their character because that is not who we agreed to at the beginning of the terms of friendship. I’m just fascinated by this idea of friendship, character, isolation. This is TBC cause I’ve made myself more dizzy and taken us all further away from the path.

XX SJ