I Don't Know What this is.

I dont know what this is, as of right now, I think I just need an outlet to get the thoughts out of my head, and because this website is my current project I think I decided that this would be that outlet. So I created a blog portion some time ago, and I decided to make the first post. I am currently writing this is a neovim terminal. Which if you don't know what that is, just open up a command prompt and you get a decent idea what I am using to write with. As of right now, I am a 23 year old college student, sitting in the corner of my college library, on a small laptop, and I have no idea what this is supposed to be.
So, now that we all have an idea of what we are getting into, I suppose I can say what made me start doing this, and that is I lost my best friend today / yesterday / when I messed up. Whenever you want to call it. I should clarify, she's not dead, I just betrayed her trust in a very fundamental way. If some day you end up reading this, I hope you know how sorry I am. I deserved to lose her for what I did. That doesn't make it any easier though. I know I will be fine, for I always am. I just had a lot of things I wanted to say to her, to tell her and to share with her. And now I don't get to.
I get it "boo hoo" get it together man, life sucks move on. You're right, and I don't think I am doing this to be a pity party. I don't think I am doing this to even justify my actions. So if you are reading this, You aren't gonna find that here. I don't necessarily think I want to justify my actions anyway, because I think that would only serve to me thinking that it was right / or an okay thing to do, and I don't.
But long story short she doesn't, at least for the time being, want me in her life anymore.
By the gods old, and the new, I can be melodramatic.

On the Idea of needing people.

Me and her would go back and forth on the Idea of "needing" people. We both really agreed that neither of us need people in our lives. I know I don't need her. A lot of my friends tease me about this idea though. How "No man is an Island, except Jacob," which is true. I am an island onto myself. I don't really need people. If I need social interaction I can easily find it at a local bar. I have developed the tools and emotional stability to help myself out of hard times. If you are an estute reader, you may find that this is in fact one of those tools. As this is a method of journaling, granted a far more public one. One that everyone can see. But I think at the end of the day I am tired of hiding. Partly because hiding behind something is what got me here to begin with, in a way.
I know I will be fine without her. I know I don't need her.
I have lived my life without people, for 14 years easily. I only really think I found good people when I got my second job. I only found people I could let myself care about at my third. And all of that kinda happened to me within the last 3 years. So I am still very new to this whole "Being a Person Thing." It is really quite interesting to think about, how I lived for 23 years now and the only real part of it has been the last 3-4 years. How about 20% of my life is the only part that matters, and how easy of a rabbit hole that would be to go down. But it's also important to remember how the 18 years of my life that have lead me to the most recent years. How life isn't a function that you put in a year, and you get who you are in that year. It is a function that has to calculate every year and every you, you where before, in order to get the you, that you are. If that's confusing, well, life is confusing and it only makes since that the rules of life are as well. Basically though if you are familiar with math, or computers I am saying that life is a recursive function.
So what is my point? Well, it is that I am certain of who I am and that I don't need people. I know who I am, and who I want to be. I don't necessarily know how I am going to become that person yet, but I will be trying. That is all I can say for sure. I also know where I started, where I started was the massive betrayal that I did to the person who was going to become my best friend. A decision made by a scared 16 year old, who was broken and who still is, and that decision followed him for many years. But I have grown past that person, I am still broken and I still have very far to go to be the person I want to be. But I have grown and done all of this on my own, with help from outside factors for certain. "It takes a village to raise a child," and all that. Also I believe heavily in the idea of outsourcing experience. As in the idea of saying "I don't know what I should do, in this scenario, you seem like you might have more experience in this area, what should I do?" but also I think if I did, what I thought was best I don't think I would have lost my best friend. I think that our relationship would have been severly damaged, but I don't think that it would have ended as bad as it ended up. It has led me to great wins, and to this great loss, so reader be ware, I suppose.
I think there are three portions of life that we can be in, in regards to needing people.

1. Needing People
2. Needing No one, or being overly independent
3. Knowing that I don't need anyone, but I still want certain people in my life

Needing People

We as human being all come into this world needing people. It is the natural state of being. Unlike many other animals that as soon as they come out of the womb, they can walk and move and talk, such as the giraffe. We are blind, and are slapped until we start to cry, because that tells the doctors that we are in fact breathing. I am not saying that the giraffe does not need its parent, as there are predators that would likely prey on the baby giraffe, I am just saying naturally we are less independent at that stage than a lot of other animals. I also ask a lot of questions in my daily life to people, and one of the popular ones I ask is "What are the most important words a man can say?" to which one of the answers that stick out to me as I type this was "Help!". That the first sign of civilization was when the first person who had a broken leg, was taken care of and wasn't left to die, because they were more of a burden to everyone around them, than a boon. The Hannibal form of thinking "It is better to die on the battle grounds than to be a prisoner of war, because then we don't have to waste time with prisoner negotiations," not an actual quote, just a paraphrase of something I heard recently. It is an undeniable fact that human beings work together better as a team, than we do in solidarity. That we acomplish more when we work together, this is why there are companies. There is an old supposably african (not saying it wasn't just saying I don't have a good and proper source) saying "If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together." Hell, the very idea of anyone being able to read this is a marvel of human teamwork. I write this on a laptop made by a company made by a team of people, I am using an operating system, made by a different team of people, using a text editor created by 1,225 different people with various plug-ins created by solo developers, and then posting it to a website hosted by a company, on the internet which was created by a team, which you probably landed here because of google or some other such non-sense which was developed by a team. I could also just talk about the ecosystem at large, how farmers sell food to distribution companies, which then deliver them to stores, which stores then sell them to you in the form of grocieries or fast food, or meal prep plans. I can go on.
But I think what I mean here is more the psychological need for other human beings. How when we are young we need emotional support from our parents in order to grow, and explore. How in highschool most people find it a terrible experience, because they didn't really have a group they belonged to, and to others it was the best years of their lives because they did, and their group was at the top of the food chain. The atomic family is one of these concepts where the american home should be composed of a man, a wife, and a daughter and son. Or more generally 2 parental units and 2 child units, doesn't really matter the race, size, gender, sex, age (as seen by many older siblings taking care of their younger ones because their parental units don't), etc... The fundamental building block of america is this atomic family, bundled in a house with a white picket fence. But also all around the world we basically organize ourselves into family units typically spanning 2-3 sometimes 4 generations in 1 house. The 3 generational households typically with Gen 1 taking care of Gen 3 when Gen 2 goes to work, while Gen 1 is still too young to care for themselves.
We are made for eachother.
We also extend outside of those family units into society, and with our friends. Who we will often ask for help when our car breaks down. Or who we sleep on their couches when we get evicted. We build eachother up and break eachother down. Sometimes we need to be broken down. It is important to have a reality check every once in a while to be told that we are not perfect. To me this is what friends do. I could never really accept this critisism from my parental unit, because they never built me up, so I never knew what was actual critisism or just to be discarded.
I think this is why I didn't stay in this stage long in my life. I learned very quickly the perils to listening to other people and how that could negatively affect my life. I think this stage of someone's life might be linked to thinking for themselves. In a song it says "You'll always be told what to do till you learn how to think." Which until this moment I didn't know nearly how well that fits here. I was taught to think for myself before I knew what the process of thinking was, or the perils of it. I was taught how to think before I knew what things where, what right from wrong was. Because of that I learned right from wrong from someone I didn't respect, and didn't like for the abuse that they gave me. And at that age I was not wise enough to know that just because I do not respect this person, this person has done wrong to me, I do not like this person, does not mean that the information they have to give is not valuable.

Being Overly Independent

So morallity isn't my strong suit in this portion of my life. This I mean, at this part of my life, where I knew how to think, but not necessarily the rights and the wrongs of what I was doing. I make this clarification because dear reader, it occurs to me that you and I have a very short history together, and as such may think I mean currently, and in due time you shall know the truest depths of my failings. Later, probably not in this essay ??? if we want to call it that, maybe flow of concious thought, but that seems pretentious and long. Depending on how long I do these and what I do them on, I feel like we will get an intimate association with me.
Now that we got that out of the way, I struggled with taking advice from people, my peers were, and here we go sounding pretentious again, beneath me. I knew more than them. I was having thoughts that they haven't even concieved of being possible yet, and I am not just talking about the idea that If I let go of the swing at the apex of its height rather than the minimum I could do fun things. I mention this because yes, I was still in elementary school when I learned to think for myself, and that I knew more than the people that raised me. Obviously I was wrong, but it just felt so right. I was years ahead in my schooling in math, which let me befriend older kids, and before I knew it, in all ways but actual age, I was older. We are gonna flash forward a bit here because though this is the beginning of my time being overly independent it is not the prime of it. All that we need take from this time is that I became 'older' from a very young age. This being said we are just flash forwarding to highschool, and we are really just skipping, the typical "I can do it myself mom" time, but it wasn't just "I can do it myself MOM", it was more just "I can do it myself anyone who wanted to help me" because I think this phase happens for 2 reasons. I am better than everyone else, and I don't want to be a burden on anyone else. And through abuse, and this perpencity for being older, but still being the baby of the group, while also being older than everyone my age. I got a mixture of both of these. I was better than all of the people my age, I have thought for myself longer than you, and therefore know more, despite for the fact that you may have thought about completely different things than what I have thought about, and therefore this area might be an area of experties of yours. (Though this being an unlikely occurance because this was highschool, and I knew that at the time.) While also because of the abuse and constant feeling like a burden, and being the youngest in a group of friends, I don't need your help because I wanna prove that I have value and I am NOT a burden.
This became habit. I became the person who did everything. Not because I had to, because I needed to. Because I needed not to be a burden. And eventually I wasn't a burden, I can't point to an exact day here and say that is the day. It was at somepoint after this when I realized I only had limited time only friends. Not because of any real reason, just that all of my friendships where typically the space of the time it was convienent for us to be friends. Which I think is healthy, to some extent anyhow.
I think this marks my full transformation to being independent, psychologically. It wouldn't be until a little later that I would become completely independent. But in highschool, I became fully psychologically independent, which I think, its not too much to say that most people don't start that transition into becoming independent until finishing highschool and going, typically away to college. Even then I would say that a lot of people remain dependent for a while after. This isn't to say that I am in a league of my own either. There are no doubt a bunch of people like me, and even some who have exceeded me in independence by a factor of years. This is just my experience and I am sharing, because I am human and I exist.
From this time in my life I have been able to define a self worth, that was independent of everyone around me. And for reasons I evaluated that self worth as very low, and this confused a lot of people but me. I think at this time I also developed morals, a side note and partially immaterial to the discussion at hand, but it is worth noting that I made mistakes before this development, and those mistakes followed me. Mistakes that where made when I still cared about what other people thought about me, followed me into a time where I didn't care what other people thought about me. I think that I partially didn't correct that mistake until very recently because,

• I said it doesn't matter what they think so why should I correct it.
• I am partially proving my independence because I am not correcting them.
• They don't matter.

I think at somepoint in this time I started to think that other people didn't matter. I know for certain that it was only recently that I started to genuinely let myself start to care about other people again. It took a while. I don't necessarily know where this part of the journey will take me in this dichotomy of independence. I assume it will bring me to a place more dependent, than independent, than I am currently. But will this send me back to basics? Only time will tell. But this isn't the place for these thoughts, the "middle ground" is.
I started to think that other people didn't matter. Hell, maybe I still don't. Just because I care about someone doesn't mean that they matter. I do know, I've met people that I never really cared about, and just knew from back in the day, and they never mattered to me then, but I say "hi" and start a conversation with them, only to find that I was really liked by them, and that I meant a lot to them. When they say this I'm shocked, but also notice that they are always really excited by the fact that I said "hi". I say always, but there are some that just have the conversation with me to be polite, I am also not really talking about them. I am talking about the ones with an apparent miss-match for my attitude towards them, and their attitude towards me. I suppose the other kind where my apathy is matched, isn't interesting to me because it was expected all along.
I still have problems with letting other people help me. Even with the simple little things like getting the door for me when I am struggling with what I am carrying. But I have gotten better. I hope that I continue to get better as time goes on, but I don't feel like this is the most important thing that I need to work on at the time being.

Middle Ground

As I am older now I tend to have friends that are still quite a bit older than I am. The ages range from 19 - 40's with a far majority being near 30. And I don't have this problem anymore in the way that I no longer feel like I need to prove my value to these people. I care about them. I don't really care what they think about me though. I kinda figure that if they like me they will stick around and if they don't they won't. I care about their well beings and will help them if they require, but for the most part, as they come and go from my life I am fine. They come and go as they please and I come and go as I please. We see eachother some days and we don't others and I am like this with all of them. I don't necessarily know what getting out of touch means either. I think its a symptom of this way of living. I go months without talking to people, to the point where they have children and the moment I think of them I text them. I then spend some time catching up, and though it doesn't mean that we will continue talking I know I could put effort back into that relationship, and get back-intouch with that person. But the part I don't get is why people think its really a problem. That it isn't just something that goes away after a while. Yes it is a thing that takes time and effort to go away, and maybe because I am not someone who is afraid of time and effort, though am admittedly somewhat bad at it, but I am willing to make it go away. To get back in touch with people despite the time and the distance. They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, my highschool science teacher said once "Distance makes the heart go wander."
But I float in and out of people's lives. I think this is natural. As I get older I will see if I remain this way. But as for now I think that it is okay. I still care about them. But I also don't need them. I guess this part is hard for me to write about, because of the person I want in my life, the person that this section applies to is now no longer in it. Or now no longer wants to be apart of it. It is still so recent. That maybe I haven't found the correct meaning in the situation yet. The reason I want her in my life is because I like how I feel around her. I like how I want to be a better person when I am around her. I like her for who she is, she is a flawed person just like me for certain, but she is a good person. I want her in my life because she is a reminder. It is also hard for me to describe her in any empirical manner. There is just too much feeling there, that everything that I can say, will be tainted by how I feel. So when I give the reasons why I want her in my life it is just a discription of the warmth felt from the sun on a summer day. Something that I cannot put into words, only that I know the feeling of being in the sun, and being out of the sun. And I live a lot of my life in doors, I do not need the warmth of the sun, but I still enjoy going outside in the summer, and basking in that sun. I also enjoy being indoors. The warmth of blanket around me as I watch an episode of the current series that I going through. I will be fine without her. I still want her in my life.
I think that this is okay to feel this way. Though I think because she doesn't want me in her life, I need to move on.
Maybe one day she will want me back in her life, and if that day comes, we will cross that bridge if we get to it, but for now I need to move on. How I do that is taking it one day at a time. One article at a time.