MoreThanMine

Nathanael Berends June 17th, 2004

This Is The First Of What Will Become A Three Part Series Of Posts.

[this post is not an effort to promote pity]

.:Preface:.

Apprehension usually comes from any one of a number of factors – knowing the characteristics of my personality though; it tends to be only one.

The Unknown…

What isn’t apparent to me in some tangible form might as well not exist. Coping with the Painful truth of this fact is something that I have become all too familiar with.

My use of the word painful is inspired by one distinct emotion – Hope.

This reality – of ‘unknowns’ - has no connotations of Pain – I’ve never felt any in the past, and have yet to.

So why Hope?

I guess that deep down – in some dark recess of my heart – I hope that I will someday feel Pain; Pain for the opportunities that this will remove, Pain for the inevitable troubles that this will – and have had – with a spiritual life of any type.

How does this relate to my true intentions for this evening’s post? The truth is that… it doesn’t… Yet…

The fact occurred to me that I have not yet revealed my intentions…

I shall reveal them here: Friends.

Without thinking, I’d tell you that I have a lot of amazing friends – given time to ponder however; I’d probably be prone to change my answer.

I have a lot of friends, but I’m not exactly sure what kind of friends they are…

I’d imagine that a lot of people would agree with me… I’d also hope that a lot of people are unfamiliar with this feeling.

As I’ve become increasingly aware in recent history, the beginning is the best place to begin: I suppose my story – for the sake of coherence – should begin during the last week of middleschool.

.:Part One:.

As we said our goodbyes and shared our agendas for the summer, there was a feeling of friendship, and community – almost more so than previously experienced at Oakdale. It seemed that the 52 of us that left that year were – for the most part – a group of good friends, if not best friends.

Perhaps it was our young naive nature, our 14-year-old innocence, or a hybrid of the two – at any rate, it never entered our minds that in only two months time we might not be friends.

It is conceivable that I am making false generalizations, perhaps others realized this – but I know for a fact that I didn’t.

Regardless of who realized this, the inevitable did in fact occur – we entered high school, and realized that the comfort, and security that our middle schools offered was gone.

It later became apparent that some people were better suited for this change. From my vantage point, it almost seemed that some people had been introduced to high school culture & customs before others of us had the chance to recognize the changes we were facing.

In hindsight, it became apparent that every single incoming freshman was just as insecure as the next – the only edge “they” had over me was that they could fake it better.

Not knowing this, I was forced to obey inertia, and found myself hanging out with the exact same people I had left two months prior.

That is, the exact people, with the exception of those who had found a way to transcend the already stringent social barriers, and had “become cool”.

So, there we stood, left in the dust of the chaotic reorganization of freshmen society – left to find out exactly what high school held for us.

As time past, those of us who were ‘abandoned’ found each other, and eventually we had observed a change from the ‘Cool’ & ‘Un-cool’ groups of each school, to a general society of ‘Cool’ & ‘Un-Cool’ groups – in other words, we all coalesced, and found our social counterparts from other schools.

This inertia kept many people satisfied with their place in society – for many, this idea of friendship remained constant. It did for me – through the completion of sophomore year.

Over the first two years of high school, I watched passively as most of my best friends made the symbolic move to the second floor – all the while, I stood in the dark first floor corridors – claiming friendship with a group who now barely knew my name.

It took the ‘loss’ of many of my closest friends for me to realize the pathetic nature of my social life. Those who I had thought closest to me found some strange ease in picking up the pieces, and moving to the second floor – rekindling with those whom they hadn’t associated with for two years.

It seemed so easy for them – yet, as they left, one by one, I found myself again secombing to inertia – and the ease of staying put.

Sure, I didn’t have any real friends – but that didn’t seem to matter, because I could show up to school everyday, and call a bunch of strangers friends. It didn’t take work – it was easy.

I suppose that the true irony of my experience with friends is exemplified by the time-honored adage: “…be careful what you wish for…” In the closing weeks of sophomore year, I had developed recognition of my current situation - and, surprisingly, a sense of motivation to rectify that which I had grown to see as disparities in my social life.

It happened.

Somehow, I had found my way into what I had seen as the social elite of Christian High – the ‘upper crust’ of our warped society. Before I knew it, I was finding myself in situations with people who I’d previously only wished to associate myself with.

As horrible as it sounds, the truth is that – to an extent – I had idolized these people - who seemed to have all of the friends, who seemed to have everything figured out, who seemed to have found a way to make high school pretty damn fun.

After I got past the initial stages of discomfort and inferiority, It seemed as though I had found exactly what I had been looking for since freshmen year. I had found a group of friends that I was comfortable around.

… at least I thought I did.

The truth is that these people were my friends – on that shallow, almost superficial level. But they – in hindsight – were not the true, deep friends that one would most strongly desire. I could spend a weekend with them, and have one hell of a good time – but it seemed that our friendships, despite the positive aspects, were incapable of depth.

The honest truth is that last night – more than a year since I began associating with these people – was the first time that I had EVER had an honest, deep, face-to-face conversation. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

It seemed that I was in heaven. For once, I felt accepted & appreciated – almost needed. As it turned out I was needed – my official role became that of a ‘slapper of drunks’.

It was a laborious job – I had become a babysitter for my friends while they went on their little substance-induced tirades.

I didn’t have a problem with this. After all, I was cool, and dammit – that’s all that mattered.

Or so I had thought. After all, common social ideologies suggested that being cool was of the utmost importance. I believed it – many of my friends still do.

It seems so wrong? of me to put it this way, but I sincerely had a feeling of superiority – I was associating with the ‘cool’ kids, and that automatically made me better than the majority of my grade.

It didn’t take long for the realities of the world to hit me. After I recovered from the initial shock of actually being accepted as the self-proclaimed brainy nerd, I was quickly taken back to the realities of life.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that all humans should be equal – it doesn’t take Einstein to see that all humans ARE equal.

What I had failed to remember was this: I was only ‘cool’ because those I associated with – myself included – said so. The rest of our grade – and the rest of the school for that matter – didn’t give any thought to us. We were only ‘cool’ because we said we were.

The moment I realized this, I had already inadvertently begun my ‘campaign against cool’. Once I had opened my eyes to this discrepancy between perceived realities, and actual reality, I was able to begin my attempt to mend the situation.

I suppose that mend may even be an inaccurate word. Rather, I began to tell others the truth that I had now realized. For as many people that didn’t pay any mind to social structures at our school, there were equally as many that felt subordinate to the ‘cool’ people in our grade. For each person who believed such, I had felt it my goal to inform of the truth.

The ‘cool’ people in our grade are a bunch of jokes. Don’t get me wrong – they are nice people – but there is not a single thing that makes any one of them superior to any other person in our grade.

I realized this - unfortunately, only after almost three years of struggling with the social ladders of Christian High.

So where does that put me now?

… to be continued…

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