It's hard making friends. There's no Mummy to hold your hand just before you enter the school doors telling you how awesome you are and how everyone in the room is going to see it too and before you know it, you'll make friends and you won't even remember that you were so worried no one would like you. Just talk to someone, she'd say, and it's easy peezy lemon squeezy after that.
It took a long time to get the friends I gots. I had the best group of friends in high school and it really hurts that we're not in touch other than the odd, weird FB post now and then. In fact, if they check their feeds, I'm pretty sure they know far more about my life than I know about theirs.
I had the best group of friends at University. I keep in touch with only 2 of them now. One just evolved past me into an outlook of life I didn't really care for. One just seems to have disappeared. One got married and seemed to have stopped talking to all his female friends. It was hard to get him to pick up a phone even before that. It was a small group, but we loved each other and really accepted one another for who we really were and didn't demand any kind of unattainable characteristic.
I think I was too caught up in my job at the Guardian to make those kinds of friends. I got a couple of amazing friends out of that time in the media, but I was almost out the door and was pretty much a loner by then. I could barely face myself, let alone the insides of others.
Teaching... well... the less said about that they better. But I did meet some fine women there and one of them is still in my heart. And Table 5 will always have a place there, even though we have fallen out of touch. They were like a grown-up version of my high school friends and I miss them all.
Moving to NY almost broke me. I could cut the loneliness with a dull knife. I left behind 2 of the best people I've ever known and it was crushing. Slowly, it got better, but I've never really opened up to any one here, even now.
Law school is a real trip. I see people around me already forging those law school friendships for life and I feel so distant. One reason I enjoyed being back with A and B was that I could really be myself and just let go. I could talk about what was troubling me, make fun of things and just talk a lot of nonsense that I know they would understand.
I'm too old for this place. They are too young for me. I am left out because I just don't care about the things they care about. I've done it already. It's as simple as that. I did all this already. I have no time for drinking, partying, watching people with suspicion or judging a person by the clothes he wears. And I have a ready-made fuck at home.
I have met people I like but the gulf is so wide, sometimes I wonder if I'll fall in. This really wasn't what I thought would be the thing that affected me the most about law school. I'm also not sure how to let it go. I can't ignore it, because I feel it, but I know there's nothing to be done about it, so do I just wait it out? It's bound to go away?
Stay tuned.
