Today, I have had my feathers ruffled.
When I went to secondary school, I made friends in a matter of days, weeks and soon we were sitting next to each other in lessons and going to birthday parties and having sleepovers and all the fun you have when you're a growing teenager. It was fun and I have a lot of good memories from those times. But I'm not the same person I was when I was sixteen.
When I went to university, I made aquaintances in a matter of hours, days, and friends over a couple of years. Soon enough we were sitting next to each other on the bed, going to bars and clubs and sharing houses and all the fun you have when you're a growing twenteenager. It was fun and I have a lot of good memories. I changed a lot as a person over university.
Consequently, when I meet up with people from school now, it's good to reminisce and compare lives and chat about what now and where next. But in some ways, I feel like I'm playing a part, a character that I was five years ago, but not really the same person I am now. I don't think they'd get the incongruence - you see people how you believe them to be and that view can change, but only if you move with it, if you're there to witness it. If you're not around to see someone grow up, it's hard to grasp that they could be that person that those stories are about. While it's nice to spend time with the friends I have 'round here, when we get the chance, it's just not the same. It's just not the same. The relationships you form at university are different because you're relying on each other in ways you haven't had to when you're living at home, with family.
At university, my housemates became my surrogate family, though this has only really been the case over the last year or so. I've spent several days with them in the last month or so and it's weird because it's so normal but at the same time, it's only suspended reality because we no longer live together, which is really quite rubbish. Finding out you can fly, you can leave the nest, you can explore the world, meet new species, only to return back and have your wings clipped and tags fastened to your legs is thoroughly frustrating to be honest. I suppose that's why I empathise with this girl:
"We would warn people not to approach her... She has no fear of humans and she could give someone a very severe bite. Her beak is designed to tear flesh apart."
On the jukebox: Nelly Furtardo ~ Try
I met up for dinner last night with two old school friends and we were talking a bit about how much we think we and others we knew have changed. Personally I think I've changed a lot but you're right - I slip straight into that old role I used to play. Except that I feel that it must be obvious that it is in part a part that I'm playing and not really 'me'. So much has happened to me in the last five years, I couldn't possibly be the same.
ReplyDeleteBut E and C seem not to have changed and, more oddly still, they seem to fully believe themselves that they haven't really changed. Maybe they really haven't. Perhaps it's only because I think about this kind of thing that I have and I know it?
And so, yes, we meet up two or three times a year, and we eat, and we talk about who is pregnant, who's together with whom, who's married, who's just finally managed to get into Oxford after three failed applications, who's just started working for some super-duper law firm and is going to be minted in seconds, and so on. Now I don't live in Home Town any more it's good to be able to catch up because I have no other source for this news. But what will happen once we're all settled into our new, grown-up lives and the pace of change slows a little? Will we still have as much to say to one another? Will we still ahve any reason to meet up?
I seem to be a slightly different person with every social group I'm with.
ReplyDeleteI'm far more confident with my friends from uni than I am with any other group. They're more outgoing and exciting.
My friends from school are - in the nicest possible way... in comparison - rather dull [/bad person]. They're far more 'normal', with marriages, mortgages and pension plans going on at the pace expected of them. I'm not shy around them, but I'm less extroverted.
People and mates in work know me as someone slightly different, too. I've seen people take sudden looks at me when I've unleashed some f-bomb, because - probably due to working with the public - I don't swear so much, as I'm the most polite man in the universe.
On the few occasions I meet people from school I used to be friends with, I am still regarded as somewhat of a joke. Though there's more defiance and indifference on my part thanks to no longer being that person, I am of course far less confident, because it is all too easy to fit back into these roles and slots our social groups had for us.
I'm more comfortable with what kind of person I am now, though, so elements of that is bleeding across all encounters.
Also.
ReplyDeleteIt's more than time for another blog now kthnxbai x
I find it weird that while marriages and mortgages and moving up the career ladder used to be something we talk about "won't it be weird when", it is now the when we used to talk about coming around. I mean, MORTGAGES?! That's proper old, that is.
ReplyDeleteI feel like all my school friends have grown up, while I'm still this drifting student type, a persona that is more evident whenever we have unireunions (I know I've only been graduated a couple of months, but for many of my mates, it's been over a year...) so in a sense, I think my old school friends are pretty much just grown up versions of themselves, having not essentially changed, whereas I see myself as a different person.
Or maybe I'm the one who has stayed the same, the one who hasn't grown up. The one left behind.
Huh.
I'm not really friends with anyone from school anymore. I was a drifter with no specific, close friends and so didn't ever really build up strong enough bonds. The few people I am still in contact with I was who I am now, with them back then.
ReplyDeleteIt's the settling down and getting married stage I feel I've entered and I'm so far away from that it's not worth thinking about.
I don't know if I like who I am or if I'm happy with who I've become. I don't feel like I know much.