Macro-Questions I - Friends

It’s been a while since I’ve been asking these macro questions to myself. Macro questions? My half baked economics jargon and this visual of me sort of zooming out to look at the bigger picture of life made me come up with that. I think it fits the bill. These questions  seem to find no particular form, and the stray bits of answers that I find only confuse me. This struggle to extract some clarity from my personal little chaos is, in my opinion, essential, and tedious, and a circular process in it that when I ask myself why I need to ask myself these questions, the act itself becomes the largest obstacle to reaching the outcome. But, it is definitely necessary, and the question of why I’m built to think and be this way, I’m trying not to think about.

Here goes number one.

Who are my friends? Who are the ones I can count on? When I go back home these days, I feel something different. Like a few counts of missing intimacy. I used to hold importance in a few people’s lives, or at least I felt so, and I don’t get that feeling anymore. The gravity and the substance of these friendships have been replaced somewhat by hollow greetings and not-so-warm hugs. These hugs last longer, mind you, as if they were trying to reinforce something. Long summer afternoon chats are now mostly awkward silences, with sputtering attempts to bring it back. It. It is what is missing. I can’t put my finger on It. Sorrier thing is, this unwanted feeling now extends to both homes.

I wish I could burn bridges. I wish these guys would just stop pretending. I can’t blame anybody, or be angry about why these people did not wait around for me forever, because, well, nobody does. Their lives aren’t mine. I wish I could do these things though, as an excuse to burning bridges. You can have the truth, but the costs involve a certain amount of loneliness. So, I walk around amongst forced smiles and sit through alcohol-deluded declarations of lifelong friendship, saying over and over in my mind “Yeah, right.” I don’t want to believe it, but I am inclined to believe it when I think that you’re born alone, and you’ll die alone. Everything, or everyone in between is just transitory.