Communicating with Friends

 It's gotten to the point in life wherein communicating with friends is a near impossibility.

I have experienced many instances of receiving texts from friends that seem like conversation-starters, only for those conversations to go no where.

I come from a letter and email-writing mentality wherein I want something to be expressed, and for a tide to be locked. We said the thing, and we had the conversation. Now it can end for now. This is in the age of texting. 

I say all this after the fact that I out-and-out ruined relationships for years straight - not understanding how to tie in my needs with those of my peers. I saw their ties as a never-ending back-and-forth, and I thought that because they had this, I could somehow become fulfilled through them - after I did not have my job.

When I had my job, I neither needed them nor sought them, and when I did, it was natural, as a recourse of self-serving desire through anxiety and hardship that my work-life (and social-work-life) provided. It was never a problem, because I didn't realize it.

When I lost my job, I thought my neuroses and heart/anxiety could be laden on the shoulder of my friends. After all, I had seen and heard a lot of things from through over the years, and while I deemed a lot of it absolute craziness and insanity, I thought a little of it was due on my end, and so I really dug in.

No one liked this, and in fact, everyone hated any neurosis coming from myself. It was of the self-absorbed and crazy kind that I felt I had experienced myself, and it honestly only angered and buffudled my friends - to the point they said that they were worried about me. They became really over-handed and almost mocking, and it seemed like they were treating me almost like a child. They would always ask me how I was and say how they missed the way I was, and they would tell me things like I was invited, but no, I am not invited. And could I not drink, etc.

It became almost as though they were babying me, when really, I was screaming out for something different.

I was screaming out for things to finally be done my way now that I was bored and unemployed. I only saw partying and drama from the friend side of things and decided to dig in there. The moments I would get together when them, it seemed as though things would turn out pretty boring.

If someone wanted answers for fun or life, they could have sought me out. 

What are we doing here? What are our goals, and things of that nature. Instead, people fumbled around. I remember hanging out at a stoner party, and I ended up making a fat girl cry who told me about some sexual assaults she had undergone. I was hated by the people who invited me, even though the conversation started out pretty regular. 

Why were they doing so many drugs to begin with? What were they seeking?

Some of the women were wearing shorts that showed their vaginas, and they were listening to music they did not know the chords to, nor could they follow much of the harmonies or melodies.

If they were having fun with each other, then why were some getting a divorce, and why was sexual assault such a prominent theme? 

Tying the boats together and befriending other campers was extremely easy on my part, and I had my friend right beside me - laughing and thinking I was awesome. It wasn't until her friend jumped in that I was "too much" and no longer cool. Then, the whole entire party chilled on me, and more or less barked at me to get out.

Later, my friend gave me an explanation as to why, and the reasons hardly held water after what I knew about what she and her friends had gone through and what she had put up with in the past. It was no way to treat at friend, but the social gravity was amazingly great. It was so great that I was stared out of a place I was invited and did not even want to go. This was a place a former best friend had invited me to "because she thought it would be good for me."

Later this friend got divorced and came out as gay. I had tried to talk to this person in a serious manner, and it was a hell for her that she did not want to tred.

That is okay, though, because I had left these people when I left for China. I had already moved on - but in a positive way, and in a way that they liked - and I wrote them words of good will and well-wishes.

It is okay, because this person and I stopped being friends in the 10th grade. It worked better when we were the way that we had been, like after college and stuff. She got to caring about me after I got back from China, but her social well-being is above and beyond anyone's I have ever met before.

I do not think I have ever met a more popular person and one who - probably - gets on with more of humanity or who has that capability to do so. It is why it hurt to lose her as a friend in High School, and I think the reason is because - i guess because she is gay. I really do not know.

I just do not see a lot of straight women denying some of the emotional and close-tied conversations and connections that I tried to make with her, and I think that it comes down to that she is an alpha-lesbian who is only attracted to super well-liked and social beings like herself.

Yes, I served my moment in her life, and we had a wonderful time. But my lifestyle demands a kind of undivided attention and a world that I myself create. So the friendship would have never worked out.

I was okay with that after I realized it, and that is why I did not want to go on her camping trip, and I also felt weird and resented that she said, "I think it will be good for you." 

Sure, we did get along, but once she noticed her lesbian lover bestie and others were not picking up what I was throwing down, it was game over for me. And as I have said, the next day, she treated me abhorrently, and as though I had no right to exist or call her a friend. As I said, I didn't even want to go and was skeptical to go.

Her friends were also glaring at me as though I was a piece of shit, and they were coddling her as though she were some queen bee. It was weird to feel so awkward and hated.

A couple years later she, like, somehow called me, and I do not know what she said other than that she was visiting her dad. She said she was mad because I hit on her friend's boyfriend. I did no such thing. They misconstrued it as such, as I was just happy to have someone talk to me. 

All this is to say that I cannot mold to the world around me. This times like 30 have led me to believe this, and I had a wonderful outlet when I was a teenager and in college. My outlet was scholastics, college, Richmond, Panda Veg, learning Chinese, and going to China. It was my creative writing classes and getting a high GPA in an area that I shined and was more or less easy.

Nothing - nothing at all - could make me feel better now. If it means associating the way that I must associate now, then nothing could make me feel better. Working at the Middle School last week was pretty much hell - and I am not mad at Robin for not knowing the job. I'm rather annoyed that I think I heard her saying I didn't look up when she came in and that she tried to have small talk with me.

I smile because I want the conversations to end and because I have no interest. I interrupt because I do not know how to listen and do not know how to make friends. Indeed, I could, but the explaining myself bit is something that I am trying to avoid, and I'm trying to base my interactions purely on what the other person is saying.

So Ms. Armstrong walked out of the Main Office, speaking with Robin, and said, "See, you're special, too." She was razzing Robin (Ms. Fife), because really Ms. Fife is quite dumb. But it was all a quip on me.

I had been answering the phone, and I don't know what I did to make her think anything. The quick direct info? The writing things down? She immediately said something about how her husband wrote everything down and she wasn't sure if it was because he had a bad memory, or what, but there were sticky notes everywhere.

The convo went on from there and into illnesses, and their marriage and children, and I have no idea. Similar to mine and Ms. Fife's conversation. Also, I had had an interview, and I just said crap, stumbled.

I guess I feel I reached my fore when I told the interviewer that I needed plans and that I executed them. I probably sounded like I speech-impeded drill sergeant. 

At one point I REALLY wanted to burst out into tears when Robin 'tried' to explain making a two-sided copy. She gave a ton of extra information about the old copier, and she breezed over the two or three key words that would make the copy happen.

Then the assistant principal came in, and I asked him, and he showed me in a completely different way, and I said "two and two" - just as he was doing it, and he repeated, "yes, two and two," - igniting the key words that I needed for a most menial of tasks. 

Ms. Fife (Robin) kept repeating things about the ants and the cleaning, and the affidavit that meant a kid was living under the roof of someone not their parent. A lot of it was language like that, "Oh sometimes the kid will be with a stepdad," and some such stuff that really meant nothing to me. I guess that was my signal to remark about living situations and getting things approved.

I already knew I wouldn't get any SOPs or any kind of document list of things I was supposed to know as the Substitute Secretary to the Principal. The other secretaries and principals didn't "know" things in direct answer form, and I was to know that nothing came as such.

So all in all, I had a really shitty 7 days. And the days before that too. 

The other secretary job was also kind of miserable - miserable not knowing anything, and seeing how these people operated. It seemed very unscientific, and I would never be able to be myself.

It was as though the lives of others and the schools and the office were paramount, but with such knowledge, I can kind of get it. 

I wanted to scream out, "Give me works and tasks related to semi-complex numbers and word-relations. Give me emails to parents and superintendents I can write that delineate foreseeable budget and personnel concerns. Let me overhear conversations and look at calendars, so that I know each and every conflict that may arise, and give me the IT solutions on top of the most challenging SAT and ACT questions that Junior struggled with.

Give me the schools Juniors are applying to, and give me the names of the Juniors and Seniors who are not attending high school. Let me sit down with them once per week for one month.

Instead, I am a fucking laughing stock, just as I was towards the end at TGC, when I had nothing to say but "ad code" and "Plus account." 

Sure, I may have looked like a worthless piece of shit, but that is because Toya and Brad were taking my job away from me and never needed my help to begin with. Then they resented me for it, and gave me a ridiculously hard time. Nothing they did was scientific. I mean it, but because I was nice, I never talked down to them. Not once. Nor did I talk down to my boss, but I should have.

And I have said this before too, but why am I the only person at The Great Courses who learned no skills to take forward onto new jobs? My boss literally kept me from learning new skills - Yes, Lisa Simpson.

I took the courses, and I worked with Abdallah, and I tried to branch out, but as I said I filed a sexism report on her as a result.

The bitch hated me and saw me as not up to snuff, nor up to learning anything. She was wildly flumoxed and annoyed with my presence, and saw men as champions of IT, who just knew it and did it.

She talked on the phone and treated her Manager/Director role as though business was talking and communicating. She wasted time and was inefficient.

Most importantly, she did not see that I was using the job as an opportunity to learn skills to propel my future. She was flumoxed by me, because she may not have realized that every free moment I had was spent learning. I did Photoshop, HTML Dreamweaver, Adobe, German after work, still did Chinese, and Excel. 

It almost breaks my heart to think about how much fascination I had with my job, but couldn't realize. I know for a fact Abdallah would have taught me the skills that I needed to move onto a new Email Marketing position. My goal was to learn Email Marketing in the event something happened. I was to learn Excel, writing copy, Photoshop, but most importantly, the Platform.

It is a shame that my boss could not understand this simple thing and made my love of learning out to be something odd. 

In many ways, I have nothing but gratitude for The Great Courses. For they hired me in their call center, and with that role, I did learn everything I possibly could. Halfway through that job, I was thinking of applying to coding camp with Georgetown. It would have been $8000, and the one thing that kept me from it was the worry I wouldn't have enough support to truly finish the program.

Without The Great Courses, I would have never made it into email marketing, and now I do literally nothing. NOTHING.