Reaching Out to Friends
As part of my current living arrangements, I haven’t been able to go outside as much as I’d like, making hard to arrange hangouts with my friends. Everyone paints college as this time of boundless socialization, of days and nights of drinking and partying, but to me it’s only served as a hindrance, narrowing the windows of time that we have for one another. As I get adjusted to being more physically insular, my social appetite begins to wane, and despite my best efforts it’s slowly bleeding into the digital facets of my friendships. Normally I respond to most messages in a few minutes, but I find myself allowing the notifications float and disappear in the corners of my screen begging for my acknowledgment. It’s just… exhausting — I feel like I’m slighting them in some way, like my repeated refusals of their invites will significantly worsen their lives. And when they ask why, it’s tiring to decide what portions of the truth I should expose to them to not feel deceptive but not cause them worry. I know I have a gift, having friends that care — not everyone does — but it still feels… selfish to exploit it. I’ve done my share of sleepless nights on friends’ problems that I can’t change, and I can’t bear to inflict that on others.
So even though I know literal steps I need to take to solve it, I can’t help but miss my friends. Late night shenanigans talking about nothing in particular, sharing worry about the state of the world — even though I’ve cultivated a circle whose beliefs mirror my own, hearing those thoughts and ideas reflected off other humans instead of echoing in the walls of my head gives them more body, more volume.
So you can imagine my glee when my friend, high on ketamine, calls me out of the blue to tell me about how the country is going to shit and the world’s on fire and how he needs to do ketamine to “take the edge off”. And for some reason, I can’t help think about how deeply I appreciated his inebriated rant. Nothing about the rant was particularly new — we’ve done many shouting matches in various parking lots — but delivered in this surprise, high package made me feel especially appreciated, that even when in a different plane of existence, people still have room in their brain to think of me. It was such a nice gesture, made even nicer by his total ignorance of making a gesture in the first place.
And that’s not all — this past week has been an unexpected journey in reconnecting with friends. One of my high school buddies randomly asked if I was free to hang out in the summer, another randomly sent me 1 cent to my PayPal with a message (and then requested 3 back — your ass is NOT getting paid). Another just asked me how I’m doing, some distant friends have started to message me again. Just now, as I’m writing this, my friend decided to tell me about his escapades in stealing food from the dining hall.
I know that it seems like I’m bragging about what amazing friends I have, but I wouldn’t write about it if it wasn’t anomalous. It’s just nice — I haven’t been myself recently, and this nudged me towards being whole again.
Hope you have a great day.
P.S. I know that “checking in with your friends” is often shared around on the internet, but I don’t think the wording is very productive. When I get messages like “Just checking up on you!” it feels as though they’re checking off a social obligation that comes after a period of inactivity, even if it comes from a genuine place. Put more effort in your check-ups — organize meetups, ask to get coffee, ask specific questions instead of the generic “how are you doing?”. Or just get high and tell them what’s on your mind, that works too! I’ll link you to this awesome Hank Green video where he talks about this.
P.P.S. I feel a weird, warm, excited feeling in my chest/stomach as I finish writing this. Weird. Maybe I should write blog posts more often.