I still have a lot of friends from my youth and young adulthood, but it took the pandemic to make me realize how limited my everyday circle of contemporary friends is. Before the pandemic, I'd work, go to the gym, go out to eat, and go to the bar, all of it alone, and just hang out with the people I met or knew there. I liked having acquaintances but I didn't really feel like I needed new friends. After all, so many had become disappointments. Some old friends just naturally grow apart. And in my mid-20s to early 30s, I became friends with people I had certain lifestyle details, musical taste, and career choices in common. But so many of those people became disappointments, as they lost control of their lives from drugs and alcohol issues or went the other extreme, becoming grotesques of their own successes or fame in ways that promoted their prior insecurities to even more relief than before they hit it big. There was even a point when I realized early in adulthood that the more I had in common with someone demographically, culturally, or stylistically, the less well we got along. I often wondered, Were people that complicated? Or was I? Some people let me down when I was down. Some friends didn't want to see me feel good about myself, preferring a certain self-effacing version of myself. Friendship is great, it's "chosen family," as we say today. But just like the other kind of family, it's rife with envy, abusiveness, co-dependence, and gossip. Being burned by friends is so much worse than being hurt by a blood relative because you actually chose this person to be in your life. At some point I must have decided that more people meant more problems so I started cutting folks. And I grew pickier about my associations as I got older and generally preferred to roll alone. I started liking people best from a distance, or when they were new and still trying to be liked. I avoided cliques and to this day can't be friends with anyone in one. Two besties are cool, but cliques and squads after a certain age still equally frighten and amuse me. (I mean, You're a 40 year old man, why are you in the Spice Girls?) So I liked my "friends for a night" or "friends at the bar" compartmentalized from my "gym friends" or "work friends." My favorite self-deprecating joke was, "I make great first impressions but it goes downhill from there," to keep people at a distance. (There is also a bit of truth to that -- close up, I have some very large pores.) I sort of stopped liking and trusting people. Now in my 40s, I'm wondering how to be friendlier. I realize that being alone, as a choice, is very different from being involuntarily isolated. But knowing what a difficult person I am to be friends with -- I'm moody, sensitive, impatient, temperamental, type-A, possibly uptight, I tend to occasionally drink too much, I get bored too easily, I'm a bit of a racist and a snob and overall misanthropic grump and, given the opportunity, I will absolutely schtup your boyfriend -- means working on me first before I even try to make new friends. Because I don't ever want to experience the level of maddening isolation I went through over the last 20 months ever again. After spending 14.5 months before being vaccinated in complete solitude (except for seeing one person one time), I'm shocked that I'm still sane. So. If anyone's interested in being part of my new friends campaign, you've been warned. I'm fun, I'm funny, but I'm complicated!
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