Friends

[updownrightleft]

Past the 4th year of life, I had a friend.
But turned him down on my doorstep as he pleaded entrance.
For I had *lent* his items, hid them in a bush, faked stumbling upon them. What a shock to reveal them.
I kept my distance in embarrassment. Don't remember why I did this. Against my desire, the door shut.
As if, I felt guilt. I would no longer deserve his friendship. It's lame. Kindergarten, my only friend relocated from sight. School. I learnt that socializing is impressing ones peers. My peers were badasses, like me. It meant breaking windows, bullying, teasing, stealing milk, lying about bedtime, parent's income. It meant to aspire to superiority in all regards over them. A competition. Not a healthy one. It meant to falsely claim pubic hair in the periphery of the penis and sperm from it ejectable. You were not interesting otherwise. Is this messed up yet?
I got good at this, but during one winter holiday I rejected their company. Back at school, they had lost interest in me! My nearly entire social life on school since 1st grade had involved a bizarre competition on deceits. That's my trauma.

 

[DC1346]

I am sorry. I intend no offense but I am not sure how I am supposed to respond to this. Is this ... poetry? Are you REALLY asking about friendship via a poem ... or is the apparent poem really just a poem?

 

[updownrightleft]

No offense taken. I just wanted to share it. You don't require to respond in any particular way.
I'm not sure if I were asking about friendship, but I am curious about it. Whether my experience is unusual.

 

[Spiller]

Past the 4th year of life, I had a friend.
But turned him down on my doorstep as he pleaded entrance.
For I had *lent* his items, hid them in a bush, faked stumbling upon them. What a shock to reveal them.
I kept my distance in embarrassment. Don't remember why I did this. Against my desire, the door shut.
As if, I felt guilt. I would no longer deserve his friendship. It's lame. Kindergarten, my only friend relocated from sight. School. I learnt that socializing is impressing ones peers. My peers were badasses, like me. It meant breaking windows, bullying, teasing, stealing milk, lying about bedtime, parent's income. It meant to aspire to superiority in all regards over them. A competition. Not a healthy one. It meant to falsely claim pubic hair in the periphery of the penis and sperm from it ejectable. You were not interesting otherwise. Is this messed up yet?
I got good at this, but during one winter holiday I rejected their company. Back at school, they had lost interest in me! My nearly entire social life on school since 1st grade had involved a bizarre competition on deceits. That's my trauma.

I'm curious, how do you find socialising now?
Are you at college or work?
Are you in a good relationship?

Your experience doesn't sound too unusual for someone with slight social impairment but who is still able to imitate his peers - that is how we learn to socialise as adolescents.
Perhaps kids with well developed social skills can choose their preferred peer group while those less able fall into the periphery groups.

As comparison, I was utterly unable to imitate my peers and was isolated through school, college (mostly), early work.. until I was about 28.
I was occasionally able to lurk at the edge of the 'Geek' groups, but my imitation skills were terrible.

In my years I've learned that even the popular, seemingly well balanced 'In crowd' kids/adults can tell stories of how hard it was for them - their personal traumas.
Whether or not there's something amiss with how our children are raised in our current society is debatable.. I only know that a key aspect of living now is coming to terms with our own trauma so we don't endlessly repeat those patterns.

 

[updownrightleft]

Negative things that I witnessed by their (and then my) interactions with others during my friendship with them, is what I thought I'd get without them as friends.
Example, we were teasing *weird* people in class. I didn't know at the time (I disregarded it), but in retrospect I felt terrible about it. It gained me respect among my friends, but it also reminded me how much I must avoid become *weird* myself (accumulating lies and excuses). It's this that I am struggling with now. I am weird, but that took me time to agree with. It is like, say one is gay, has feelings towards the opposite sex, but he denies it to himself. Because he learnt as a witness that gayness is to be ridiculed (so he takes a precaution). Since I lost these friends, initially I developed delusion (Because I never got bullied, but I witnessed bullying; it all was in my mind). It is not a logical, but an irrational fear that reveals itself, triggered by spotting certain patterns in certain behaviors and appearances, situations, etc. I think it is comparable to that what one whom in contrast fell victim to bullying instead would experience in after-effect, it is trauma. It was weird to not have them as friends any longer, because their method to cope was the only social method that I knew. And, no one else but them would acknowledge this method. Now, how would I adapt myself. Turns out I'd just gradually isolate myself in fear of becoming exactly that what I had been causing. That is the best thing that has happened to me, long-term.

When I was a kid previous to school (also to kindergarten), I always talked, constantly about anything. And I went about the neighbourhood in people's gardens to explore. I no longer enter people's gardens, neither do I blurt out my mind to people constantly. Though I am vivid in uttering stuff and conversing to myself.

I am very different from that person I was in elementary school. Infact, I am maybe the opposite of what I seemed like to others at the time. Now I am in the process of coming to terms with myself as far as revealing my nature to others (I am recently diagnosed).

It is hard to say how I find socializing right now, because prior to very recently I've been this muddled up mind, living in bedlam. Since I got my diagnosis, I've been realizing that I can change. And that is what I am doing. I am accepting many things about myself, like stimming, it is okay to ask questions, I am not a freak, and a great many assumptions that I have had about body language, facial expressions and indirect language, etc. That I now know just aren't true or I cannot assume them to be (I've always known theoretically I cannot assume them to be without confirming them). I am way more comfortable socially today than one year ago, simply because I've begun caring less and less about all the intricacies of social conduct, and what is right and what is wrong. It is a work in progress.

I am not in college, I am not in work.
I do not have friends that I communicate with frequently nor ones that I have things in common with. I am comfortable, but I require occassional contact with people. Usually my family. And this forum has helped me greatly to stimulate that need, though I am a new member. Infact, I've not felt as if I've connected anywhere as much as in this forum.

Thanks