paper faces on parade
this is my fourth attempt at this blog entry. hrmph. last night i got this email from an old high school friend. we were the kind of friends that spent many hours chatting on the phone, but i knew we wouldnt stay in touch forever. that is probably my fault to a large degree. maybe it would have been different if we had graduated the same year, but we didnt and i frankly could not wait to leave high school behind me. i never really liked it and i was always bothered by cliche highschool dynamics and politics. i generally moved freely within "cool" circles, invited to parties and what not, but i often chose against attending. fact is, the concept of getting drunk off your ass has never been particularly appealing to me. I also could not stand how much people talk badly about each other. you really couldnt go anywhere without hearing a "not-cool" person maliciously slandered. and i hated it. i hated the great divide, the social heirarchy, uban/suburban disconnect, the rich/poor dichotomy and everything that went along with it. i hated jokes about getting aids since i had dear friends with the disease, i hated when people told me they felt bad for me because i lived IN the city, i hated when other people made blanket statements about suburbia snobs. i hated social injustice, and everything that went along with it. i found that i ended up being a social-chameleon of sorts. i went out of my way to make people feel comfortable in their own elements. even my word choices would change depending on whether i was hanging out with kids from the streets of south philly or kids whose parents took them to tropical islands for vacation. some of my close friends had been doing hard drugs for years and others did not know if marajuana was something you smoked or drank. i became all things to all people, yet maintained my personality. there were (and still are) some people that i honestly have no idea why i became friends with them in the first place. they were not particularly personable or friendly or fine upstanding citizens, but i loved them tremendously. i would go out of my way to spend time with them. sometimes my worlds would collide and make things a little tense for some people. my graduation party was one of the funniest nights. i felt like everyone was staring at each other like they were meeting alien life forms for the first time. Some people had multiple piercings all over their faces and others had probably purchased their turtlenecks from LL Bean's fall line. the kids from the hood and the kids from prep schools might as well have been speaking a different language. all i was trying to do was fascilitate normal conversations, but everyone sort of clumped together with the people that looked just like themselves. basically there were about four micro-parties happening simultaneously.
(people are so fascinating to me. kids in high school are often sad and needy and require frequent affirmation regardless of what circles they move in. when it comes down to it, i basically believe we are all in the same boat and have the same needs. these needs are most obvious in small children. i dont think the needs change as we get older, we just get much better at hiding them)
but anyway, about this girl who emailed me. i always really enjoyed spending time with her. she was the sort of girl who cried easily but always out of a good heart. she was compassionate and free and loving and eager to make people happy. she seemed to have an endless flow of life that she passed around to everyone at every opportunity. boys fell in love with her and sometimes she didnt notice because she was so busy loving everyone else. girls wanted to be like her and occasionally hurt her out of jealously, but she loved them all the same. she really tried hard not to be a side-taker and it wounded her deeply when people attempted to force her hand. she easily told people she loved them, but you really believed it coming from her. she was visibly uncomfortable when people would bad mouth people she knew and then ask her opinion. if you had to name a fault, it was that she was too nice. she could not bear the idea that anyone she knew was "bad" so she would always try to find a reason why you-really-couldnt-blame-them-because-you-had-to-understand-that-everyone-has-a-different-background-and-who-knows-what-might-have-happened-to-them-recently-that-would-make-them-act-this-way-but-she-was-sure-it-was-something-because-they-were-really-nice-people. in that way, she was always a much better woman than i. i form poor opinions more quickly than i would like to and then i have to work at deconstructing those opinions. as it turns out, you never know what sort of impact your friendship might have on someone else. this particular girl has since moved to the West Coast and seems to be living the life of her dreams doing exactly what she always wanted to do. i've thought about her off and on the past several years but always figured that our relationship was just fated to remain in a particular time in life. she mentioned in her email that when she moved she took with her something i made for her birthday years ago. she also told me i was always one of her favorites growing up (coming from her, i believe it). i would say likewise. it just goes to show that you are never done learning from your past. if you forget where you came from, you might forget who you are.
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