I had dinner with the boy’s friends tonight. I cannot pinpoint what attracts me to the boy, but one thing’s for sure. His stable network of friends and family is the main thing that impresses and attracts me. His group of friends have stuck around since secondary school days, going out almost every weekend for soccer, late night lan games, and so on. With them, any conversation flows freely. A sense of bonding without overtly being flashy just permeates the atmosphere around them – that’s how comfortable it is, like a second skin. I told the boy many times how much I envy this close, easy bond he has with his friends. It’s like through thick and thin, up and down – they find some way to support each other.
Growing up for me was clandestine at best, and I have a natural cynicism to things and people. Even now, in university, the sense of misfit still takes hold of me now and then, and threatens to engulf me in depression. I fight it, beat it, and bounce back, but I can’t shake it off. A sense of utmost loneliness and solitude hangs about me like a weary air.
It doesn’t help that my family is not connected to a close-knit extended network of friends and family. I’ve never actually found groups of friends or even just friends that will stick by me, and that somehow, despite words unspoken and length of distance/time, I’m still able to keep up that strong bond with them. Not that I don’t try – I tried maintaining relationships with my closest friends, but somehow they drift apart, finding work, boyfriends, and family much more important priorities. After so many efforts to keep up a friendship, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that girls always seem to devote time for something else other than their friends, and perhaps I should be more selfish with my own time and resources.
Yet, everytime I’m out with the boy’s friends or family, I’m reminded that such closeness does exist, if only I can find it.








