Your Friends

[sofonanm]

I can't think of how to express this properly.

Erm, do you feel like your friends are not the people you should be with?

I don't want to say "bad influences" because it gives it a moralistic, childish edge.

But... people who, if you were to overlook the Earth's population and choose your friends, would not make the cut?

I feel this must happen more often in small town areas. Sort of like, you have to make do with what you have and be happy.

Personally, I feel like each day I should be walking around the woodlands with Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman - I feel like those guys and would like to develop close and meaningful friendships with like-minded people - but the few friends I have at the moment don't seem interested in this at all. I find us locked in mental games with each other - a below-surface conflict about our differing interests and perspectives on our lives.

It's emotionally draining and I'm beginning to sense their very presence in my life as a bad omen. Yesterday they called me asking to hang out, I declined. We agreed on Wednesday (tomorrow) as a possible time. These are old drug buddies, really. And these days I don't use any intoxicants at all. I don't preach about it because I have no perspective - I just, for the most part, started preferring the state of my mind and organism when it wasn't overwhelmed on a drug. But they smoke grass like it's oxygen and it's impossible to escape their influence. I don't think the drug does anything for them personally - they're angry, frustrated people. But it's very hard to turn down free drugs when you've been doing them casually for years. They take it as a personal insult that I decline the offer. It causes bad vibes and closes doors to deeper communion in relationship that would remain open if 1) I got high or 2) they either did not or didn't make a big deal of me not doing it.

My apologies for making this into a blog post. I'm really interested, though, in knowing whether you all find this to be common to your own lives as well? How do you deal?

 

[the captain]

I find that none of my friends are overly like me, at least superficially.

I've got friends who have gotten married, had kids and moved to the suburbs. As much as I love them, they are without exception really boring for anything outside of a game, a meal, etc.

I've got friends who are unemployed (or damn near it), hard addicts and generally unacceptable in polite society. They tend to be more interesting and fun, but, well, you know...

And me, I fit right in the middle. Marketing director, respectable job. Heavy drinker, musician. Generally speaking, it seems my friends are people who, despite their obvious circumstances ("Hi ... what do you do for a living?") have a kind of charisma I like. They dont necessarily ever like one another (or at least relate to one another). And me, I don't quite relate to any of them. But I love them all ... even if they're jackasses.

[sofonanm]

Great post, Luther.

I liked having casual friends in school when there wasn't years of emotional attachments beneath the surface.

Two of my friends came to my house last night. Such friggin' manipulating, bad influences.

I took a single hit (albeit a densely packed hit) from their gravity bong and then realized why I hate intoxicants and marijuana in particular. Then I sat through four hours of ridicule and contempt. "Only ONE HIT? Are you serious?!!! We need like six to even feel it. There's no way you're there. You need more. Take more. C'mon!" and then they'd think of new ways to either intellectually or emotionally manipulate me into thinking I'd need more. No way, not friggin' having it. I just can't explain my reasoning to them because they're so deep into the psychological addiction and attachment to marijuana. They can't experience life unless they're stoned.

I don't even want to see them again since I now have no desire to ever even be near marijuana again and their whole lives revolve around it. It's idiotic - they spend hours trying to manipulate me by claiming that it's spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally uplifting and beneficial even though there's a huge glaring inconsistency in what they're saying - they, themselves, are not spiritually, intellectually or emotionally uplifted or benefited at all. They're angry, frustrated people who use marijuana like alcohol to reach a state of mental anesthesia, where the clarity of the natural state is dulled and while existing in that state that can remain unaware of their condition.

Horrible night, really. My sleep was restless and every dream was just of how terrible the high felt enveloping my body and mind. And I'm saying this as a person who has used marijuana and other drugs heavily for years. I cannot stand it now.

Those friends are really like parasites on my mind. I don't know how people can be so manipulating and cold to their friends. They keep trying and trying to drag me into that world - the world of being attached to drug experiences, which is a spiritually dead state. I'm moving the opposite direction. I feel so upset about it because each time I see them it's the same thing - them trying to push this experience that I DO NOT WANT, me trying to explain my crystal clear reasoning which takes their perspective into consideration but shows it in light of the whole, failing at that because all they understand is "I like this, you should too - and if you don't, you're not on this great level we're on, so we're going to laugh at you and ridicule you and cause you emotional pain..."

I've tried to tell them that I don't want to be friends with them anymore. It's no big deal to me, I believe in friendliness, not creating friendships and dragging them on forever even when people change. They just keep coming back though, as if they never heard me. I get such a negative vibe from them - so strong I cannot even explain it. They make such angry, frustrated music too and I feel like it's sending out this horrible feeling into the world and consuming them as well. It's a draining experience being with them, I don't feel good with them, they're not good to be with.

[sofonanm]

I just wrote them an email terminating our association. 

[the captain]

That's rough. Friendship is, in a way, pretty much all we've got on this spinning mostly blue rock of ours.

[sofonanm]

That's rough. Friendship is, in a way, pretty much all we've got on this spinning mostly blue rock of ours.

Yes, all the more reason to make sure that caring relationships are established and maintained with understanding lest they become emotionally painful and taxing on the system.

I believe in friendliness and friendships, but I don't believe in bad friendships. Cut them loose, is my approach.

[the captain]

Careful what you cut, that's all.

[sofonanm]

Careful what you cut, that's all.

I feel you, Luther.

I can make the distinction in this case - these were friends from a past era, so to speak.

The personal connection was no longer there, only the shadow of what it was before.

[lance]

The friends I made when I was between the ages of 19-21 have stayed my friends.


Everybody else has come and gone.

I have 'de-friended' people in the past a few times....Nowadays I regret doing it...maybe because I got a little older and realized that it was me who was the asshole.