I’m 28 years old. In 1 month and 17 days, I’ll be 29. I don’t know how many of your grandparents might’ve died in their 60’s, but I’m just about half way to the point where when you see in the obituary “So And So, 64” you kinda shrug it off and figure they were old enough, even if you aspire to make it longer. For the sake of talking quicker, let’s say half my life is over.
If half your life was over, how much time would you devote to insincerity? How many pleasantries would you offer? How many times would you apologize? I’ve had some friends for 20+ years. Think I’m going out to a $2 Tuesday and gonna make a few more that last that long? Think if I get stuck in some office or meet people in travels we’re gonna stick like the ones who’ve made it this long?
When half your life is over, if you’ve been paying attention, you can get a fairly solid hold on yourself. I do think I actually know why I call you friends and other people acquaintances. You all share wildly improbable and respectable characteristics that I don’t just require, but think are flatly fundamental in the pursuit of honest relationships. When that fails, we fail. Can the criterion get a little wobbly from time to time? Sure. But, just as with attraction, I think friendship is signified by something deeper than mere claims to it.
Seriously, who actually wants to be friends? Friends ask favors like needing to help move. Friends have emotions and hurt your feelings too. Friends have habits and ticks and annoy the fuck out of you. These are obviously cynical descriptions to get to a deeper point in that friends are about resource allocation. I think you deserve my time because, be it in your silence, or attempts to engage, I’m confident enough it’s from mutual respect. If and when that gets exposed as untrue and it fails, so be it.
If right out the gate we’re going to fail though? Well, have you spent half your life unable to figure out the best kinds of people you need in it? For me, that’s ones who can talk and speak to their individual circumstances. I don’t really tolerate scaredy cats and dolls with pull cords. This is often seen as cold. This is also to be distinguished from a “style” of speaking about things with obscenities. I also don’t really care to “fix” my tendency to antagonize those bad habits if, conditional, you want to claim friendship.
I say it all the time. There probably won’t be a time not to say it. A lot of us haven’t seen or really talked to each other in a minute. If you’ve got a shitty living situation or developed some mental discord and I try to roll through with cash and fun times and my manner I took for granted is cool, you really really really want to either figure out how to fix or talk about it early or get busy running away. I’m confident and earnest enough as it is, let alone if I find myself with even more cash and time to start molding environments more deliberately.
So, whatever things warnings like this bring to mind, you’ll get bonus points for addressing early or voicing after reading something I wrote. I’m half dead. I need to force your hand before I lose the capacity to experience anything ever again. You can cry about it, but I’m about to die about it.
