Remaking friends

As I grow older, I tell myself that I cannot afford to lose friends because I don't make them easily.

I saw quite a few of my old sec friends yesterday night at a dinner which I've dreaded, because I've made myself incommunicado to them for the past years. I wondered how they would react.

They were my closest group of friends in lower sec, and they still made the effort to reach me. Why was I so mean to them? A columnist wrote about her own experiences fighting with and cutting out friends in the papers today. She said that people change, and when friends no longer offer you what you want in life, you should decide whether to keep the friendship. Sounds selfish, but I guess my mentality was a bit like that then.

We were the model students. Some of them were in leadership roles and we were all hardworking and getting good grades. As a group, we even reported to the science teacher about how some of the students in our class got tips about an upcoming practical test. We were snitchers; I couldn't believe it now, though it seemed the correct thing to do then. I'm glad we were not ostracized by the class then.

I was the one who changed, I think. Being "model" takes effort and was just less fun. I'm not a rebel but being a bit quirky and imperfect, and failing maths, and occasionally geography, was just more me. They seemed so sure of everything while I was just fumbling along. I hate being judged and corrected.

But yesterday, spotting them in the crowd, my first feeling was relief, especially when a friend who sat next to me in class and whom I didn't know was coming was there also. I told some of them I was happy to see them, and I meant it.

I've also cut out a number of friends from JC that way, because JC left me with a lot of bad memories and I wanted to start with a clean slate: I wanted nothing to do with them. Kind of like a memory surgery. Cut out the malignant bits. I was not myself in JC and therefore the friends I made there are not really my friends either. It was not their fault that I had a difficult time, but they formed part of the experience nonetheless.

Now, I think differently. Losing friends through deliberate neglect seems very selfish to me now. I'm quite certain that friends I've ignored do not understand why. The reason, simply to sum up, was that I was unsure of myself as a person. I presented slightly different personas to different groups of people. When I became uncomfortable with a persona, I shed it, along with the friends who knew that side of me. I think, I hope, the personas are converging as I grow older, and that I can remake the friendships I've made and lost along the way.