Let's imagine a hypothetical situation.
Or hell, let's not. Let me give it to you like it is...
For the past year or two, the majority of the people I regularly communicate with have been long-distance friends. Not to invalidate the friends I've had coffee, drinks, or occasional movies with, but I DO have a larger number of "online friends" and penpals than friends who stop me on the street to say hello.
Why? Because why not? I dig penpals. I have lots of them, all of whom bring something new and interesting to my life. I like to spend long, lonely Sunday afternoons writing letters or emails. It's a nice way to be alone, and to be with someone -- at the same time. Admittedly, I'm shitty at replying to emails, but I've only ONCE failed to write a letter back to somebody, at least in the past year or so. It's nice to have "friends," even people you've never met, and probably never will meet, all over the world.
So, I'm on the other side of the country now. I'm not entirely friendless and alone, although it IS Spring Break, and I'm one of about three people on this campus who isn't going home -- as this IS my home now -- and it IS a little lonely already. Now, I'm fine being a little lonely. But! There are people on this side of the country whom I've been communicating with for a long time! People I haven't even met, but with whom I've already kind of established different forms of friendship! So, hell, regardless of whether I'm lonely, it would be pretty interesting to meet some of these nice folks! Right???
Of course right. So, my friend from Federal Way and I have emailed each other a couple of times -- we met on a bulletin board ages ago, and have emailed each other a few times in the past few years. She's an English teacher now, and, it seems from her words, quite a bit happier and well-adjusted than she was a few years back. I'm quite happy, and quite proud of her, though I don't "know" her well enough to call her a close friend. There will be time for that. I emailed this friend of mine from Federal Way (which is pretty close to Seattle; maybe 45 minutes or an hour from here?) and asked if she wanted to have coffee. Or maybe she emailed me and asked if I wanted to have coffee; I can't remember. One of these weekends, oh yes! I will take this lovely person out for coffee. I don't mind taking a bus up to Seattle or anything, or buying coffee for a potential new friend. Who KNOWS where these things might lead? Someday, this person I haven't yet met might be my maid-of-honor at my wedding or something. Or maybe we'll hate each other. But it's worth a try! One can never, EVER have too many friends.
I emailed this girl from... well, hell, I forget where she's from. Oregon someplace. We've been friends/enemies for three years now, but have never met. We'd email each other if we found something in each other's online journals that we found disagreeable, or something pleasant. I bitched her out a lot for being whiny. She bitched me out a lot for bitching her out. Somewhere, in all of this, I think we ended up respecting each other a great deal. I respect her a great deal anyway. She's going to school in Oregon someplace. Now, I know Oregon's a big state, but I don't mind travelling. Hell; it might just be better to travel to Bumfuck, OR to spend a day with somebody nice than to go, alone, to some bright, shining California beach. Lots of people on this campus have gone to a bright, shining California beach for Spring Break, so what's stopping me from packing a spare pair of underwear, getting on a Greyhound, and finding Bumfuck, OR for a cup of coffee with somebody whose life I know something about, and who has been interesting to me for quite awhile? The girl from Wherever-the-hellish, OR emailed me back and said she's on her own Spring Break on a bright shining beach in California, but that coffee sounds like a good idea for another time. Well, good!
A little clarification in the margins: Olympia, where I live, is pretty much right in between Portland (south of here) and Seattle (north of here). I guess Portland is a little further away. But not TOO far. You can get there and back on a Greyhound for like, twenty bucks or something. Plus, everybody and their damned brother has been telling me: "Helena, you should go to Portland! Portland is like, SO awesome! You'll love it! It's like, the best city I've ever been to!" So, I'm going to end up going to Portland. Because why not, after all? I've never been there, and folks keep telling me how great it is, so, sure! And what better time than Spring Break? Probably I'd just go for a day trip or something, but that would be enough.
Now, what was really kind of exciting is that I have a penpal from just outside of Portland! Quite a nice fellow by the name of Sheldon. I've thought, a time or two, that he's a little patronizing, but not to any really irritating level. He's quite a bit older than me, with a family and, from what I understand, a nice, suburban life. So, we're obviously quite different, but I like that. It's nice to talk to people who aren't exactly the same as you. Now, several times, Sheldon has made it clear that I was welcome to visit; once, last fall, when I was working at Burger King and just utterly disgusted with everything in my life and ready to pack some underwear and run away, Sheldon emailed me and told me that he'd really rather have me end up at his house than see me wandering some highway in West Virginia or something... Of course, I was just blowing off some steam, but the invitation was nice. Doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a really close friend, but it does mean that somebody in this great shining world gives a damn. Now, I'm closer in age to Sheldon's kids than to Sheldon, but after all, I've spent many an afternoon at Lost Dog Café talking to folks much older than me -- or sometimes significantly (relatively speaking) younger than me. I don't care. Age ain't nothin' but a number, as they say. And if Sheldon doesn't give a damn -- as he indicated by saying I was welcome to visit sometime -- then I don't give a damn either.
So! Thinking of going to Portland for a day to see the sights, one of the main attractions, for me, is that I have a penpal quite nearby who very well might be able and willing to have coffee with me. Right? Are you guys with me so far? All of this making a certain amount of sense?
Now, I think I mentioned something about Portland in this journal, and Sheldon emailed me this: "I need just a hint or two. Are you going to knock at the door or do you want to be picked up somewhere? I know you hate Starbucks but Yukon blend any time of day with a little vanilla is damn good." Now, I'm pretty sure I didn't reply to this. One, because, as I said, I'm shitty at replying to emails, although I try. And two, because I was, once again, just sort of talking, not really making any definite plans, and I wasn't sure what to say: "yeah, meet me at the bus station at 12.35, sharp"? Not quite. I wasn't sure what, exactly to say at that moment, so I decided to think about it for awhile, which was the point at which this email got lost in my inbox. My inbox is notorious for eating emails that I decided to "think about" before replying.
Then, I asked everybody for book recommendations. And you guys have done a GREAT job of that. I'm really pleased that enough of you bothered to give me an opinion or two. Really, I owe you ALL thank-you's, and I AM slowly working on emailing all of you back. I'm adding all your recommendations to a list, and probably someday I WILL read all of them, although I'm up to like, two hundred or something, which, superwoman though I might be, I cannot read in ten weeks. Anyway, Sheldon emailed me a book recommendation and even a review of the book he found in some local paper. But with somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty emails to reply to, I was a little backed up, and didn't get to reply to that one either.
Well, I emailed Sheldon finally, thanking him for his book recommendation, and informing him of my tentative plans for the rest of Spring Break, and asking him if he was still up for grabbing a cup of coffee with me someplace.
And he -- he who has faithfully replied so often over the past almost-year -- replied: "I think you should spend your time with your room-mate."
Well, what the hell? What on EARTH did I do so wrong? Within a week or two, this person went from offering to pick me up someplace, to rejecting my invitation to spend an hour or two together. And in such a vague, rude, spare way! After probably about a year of letters back and forth, THIS? For WHAT? What on earth did I do to deserve THAT?
I figured there must be some misunderstanding. But I really wasn't willing to let the harshness of that little one-line "fuck-you" off the hook. So I replied something to the effect of: "what the hell, Sheldon? I was just trying to be friendly; since I'm likely going to be in town, and you seemed willing before, I really don't think anything I said was so out-of-line..."
(For the record, I deleted all of these, so I'm going on memory here. But I have a pretty good memory for these things...)
Sheldon replied that he'd been "patient" with me. But that he didn't want to have coffee with me, and he didn't want to meet me, that my "attitude stinks," that I act like the world revolves around me, and that maybe "in a few decades," I'll learn that it doesn't. And then he told me to try my best not to be "friendly" anymore.
I just don't get it. I really don't get it. I thought I was being nice -- granted, my emails always come a little late, but I really thought that I was just being nice. I genuinely don't understand why, after a years' worth of letters -- just "shoot the shit" letters, mostly -- and maybe a dozen emails, my penpal suddenly proclaims that he wants nothing to do with me because I asked him out for coffee. Was my response to his book recommendation not lengthy enough? Well, listen; I'm telling everybody up front -- I TRY to email you back, but sometimes I suck at it. And sometimes, I think dashing off a few lines is better than not making ANY effort to respond to things. Right?
What could so offend someone about anything I said? I wish now I hadn't deleted those emails. Did I accidentally type them full of "fuck-you's" or something instead of saying, "hey, buy ya lunch sometime?" What the fuck did I do that so offended this person I thought was my friend? I really thought that I was even being fairly accommodating, you know? I wasn't asking for a ride, wasn't asking for a place to stay, wasn't saying, "hey, I'll be in your neighborhood at such and such time, meet me at noon." I left it wide open, so that my friend could say "Well, I'm not free this week, maybe another time," or even, "hey, I don't think it would be such a good idea," or "I'm not really in the mood," or SOMETHING. What did I say that was so wrong? What DIDN'T I say that I should have?
Now, what really bothers me isn't that Sheldon somehow spontaneously told me he wants nothing to do with me. Whatever. I never even met the dude, and while his letters were interesting, I can always find a million and one other things to read, a million and one other people who will send me letters... He's one of those people I had a certain fondness for, but, after the proverbial two years, it will be amazing if I can remember his name, I'm quite sure. Friends and acquaintances are often much more dispensible than we care to think. This is nothing to really GRIEVE over. It's disheartening, but little more than that.
What DOES bother me is this obnoxious "I've been patient with you so far, and I'm a very patient person" bullshit. If the dude had some problem with me that was going to make him blow up at me all at once over a stupid thing like asking him out for COFFEE, why didn't he TELL me he thought I was a self-centered bitch? Why didn't he MENTION that he had some sort of real problem with me? How many other people are out there in this world, writing me emails, writing me letters, inviting ME out for coffee, who are suddenly going to tell me they don't like me as a person and want nothing to do with me? This whole "I've been patient" thing shows a HUGE weakness of character; if he had some real hang-up about my "attitude," then he should have gently pointed it out LONG before freaking out on me! Talk about a bad attitude!
Now, don't get me wrong; there are people in this world whom I REALLY don't like. People whom I have NO interest in talking to or hanging out with. I'm not MEAN to them; I don't just suddenly tell them one day that I don't like them and I want nothing to do with them! But I DO say things like, "no, I'm not really in the mood for hanging out right now," or even things as blatant as, "I really don't want to talk to you now, because I'm busy and your chit-chat really isn't interesting me very much at the moment." But I don't regularly email and write to someone -- for a whole YEAR -- that I really don't like, without giving them SOME hint that I have a problem with them. Sorry, Shel, but knock it off with the "I'm so patient" shit; if something was bothering you before about me, you should have told me so. Since you didn't, it just makes you chickenshit, not "patient." If you dont fucking like me, don't fucking write to me. Or, write to me and TELL me you don't like me; don't string me along for a fucking year, thinking that I've got a nice friend in Portland who may just meet me for coffee someday.
["...a man's attitude determines, to a large extent, how his life will be..." --Mulholland Drive]
So. I really don't give a shit if Sheldon thinks I'm self-absorbed. He can think that all he wants. His opinion is important, of course, but it's my freaking life, and I'm living it to the best of my abilities, and I'm fairly happy. So his opinion that my "attitude stinks," is a whole hell of a lot less valid than my own opinion that I'm living well and doing what I want to do. MY opinion is that Sheldon is a pretty damned weak person to go a YEAR without mentioning that he's got some sort of problem with me.
The above rant is not really a rant about "how could my friend have just dumped me like this?" but a rant about how much I fucking hate weak people. Be HONEST! If you think I'm self-absorbed, write me and say, "I think you really aren't paying attention to what anybody around you says." If you think I'm a complete twatrag, say it and get it over with! This is to ALL of you reading this: if you don't fucking like me, fucking TELL me, and don't act like I'm some great friend of yours. I'll try to do the same for you if you're really pissing me off for whatever reason. Give it to me straight, and don't give it to me a year after the fact. Let me know where I stand with you, even if I barely know you. I don't like feeling betrayed by people who acted as if everything was fine and fucken dandy for ages and ages. Grow the hell up! DON'T be "patient"! Be an asshole if that's what you think I deserve! Don't string me along for a year.
In the middle of typing this entry, Dracor knocked on my door with a strange look on his face. He looked like a grown-up version of a little kid who has just skinned his knees and is trying very hard to be very brave and not cry.
Dracor is taking next quarter off from school at Evergreen. Something went wrong in the registration office, and he couldn't register for classes until all of them were already filled up, waiting lists and all. So, he's moving out, going back home to Tacoma for six months, and returning next fall.
I stood watch over his sister's car, parked illegally, as he brought his packed things out and stuffed them into the trunk. He didn't look devastated, but sometimes it's hard to tell with Dracor. I think a little part of him is really, really crushed at having to leave the school he loves so much. He loves this school even more than *I* do.
I helped him stuff a big box of clothes or something into the backseat. Then I hugged him, made him promise to visit, and went back inside before I had to watch his car leave. I didn't cry. Well... a tear or two did come to my eyes as soon as I was in the elevator and he was out of sight. It just isn't fair to him; he loves this place and they're kind of kicking him out. And besides: he's one of my best friends here. I'm going to really miss those goofy Irish drinking songs of his, and the evenings when he bounces into my room asking if I'll braid his hair to look like the guy from "Willow." Ohhh, Dracor, you silly, silly boy. You're weird, you're kind of a flake, and you're one of those magically unique people who will never, ever get lost in a crowd. And I'm going to miss you as one can only miss those freaks you know you could NEVER replace.
See you in September?
Going to dinner now. Going to sit by myself, because all my friends at school are gone except Louise, who hates the cafeteria. Going to read and eat salad and not think about much of anything at all.
~Helena*