how to make friends | Hey Infinity

1. How to not make friends: refer to someone as “ethically flexible”. Oops.

2. There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world. People are allowed to talk about/mention/feel sad about different things, even if you feel like those things are not as important/tragic/terrible as the things you think are terrible/tragic/important. Just like people are allowed to be happy, even though there are terrible things happening. No one has to wallow in all of the misery at once. You are not the director of the world’s actions. You don’t get to proclaim what’s important and what’s not. Basically, shut up!

3. sometimes it is forever; other times it is nothing at all.

4. Do some people just enjoy being cynical? I can’t understand it. How can you even have the energy to be so mean-spirited, hateful, angry, blunt, wrong, foolish? Does it give you some kind of pride? Does it make you happy? Does it feel like you’re doing the right thing? Are you lashing out at some unknown attacker? What are you doing?! What. Are. You. Doing. Just stop! Good grief. Do you need a hug?

5. At some point, no matter how nice/funny/smart/good-looking someone is, the little things they’ve done or said that you’ve disliked in a deep-down sort of way add up. And it’s sad, heart-breaking, whatever. But it happens. And they just aren’t the person you thought they were/you didn’t know who they were to begin with.

6. good things from the past month of my life: sparklers in the middle of the road at midnight, polite strangers, tiny presents of tiny stickers from tiny children, mail from Panama and America, learning possessives in French (but please don’t ask me to actually prove it!).

7. You can do it all differently tomorrow.

8. Orange Is the New Black is a great show! I never believe it. It’s always true.

9. It’s real fun living in the middle of a giant city, especially at night, when you hear murderous screams/manic laughter from outside your window and you’re never sure if it’s either or both or just a crazy alley cat.

10. We’re more than halfway through the year, World, and I’m not really sure if we’re being any kinder to each other. Let’s try harder. Let’s all keep going.

Not bragging or anything, but I have a handful of really close really great friends. I’m not sure how it happened, really. Some stuck around from high school, dwindling down from the large crowd of kids that packed the hallway by the band room every weekday morning before the bell rang for class. Some I met in college — yes, I guess I actually did meet people in college — and somehow I became friends with them during the long semesters and years full of Shakespeare and Psychology and Procrastination with a capital p. Some I met after school, somehow or another, fellow roamers around town, or they were involved in the crazy post-graduation stuff I found myself doing.

And I guess it’s really just amazing. Because I’ve met a lot of people — hundreds and thousands of people — and this little bundle of people I keep close to me, well, how did that happen?

I think about friendship a lot. I think about relationships a lot, and the different kinds there are or can be, and the kinds that exist but shouldn’t.

I think friendship is underrated: the fact that one human, with all of their crankiness, and weird or offensive jokes, and psychological problems, or their introverted or extroverted personality, or their awkwardness, or their favorite music — all of that and more combined — can meet another human, with all of their stuff, and be friends. Like each other. Really, truly, like each other. Like the differences and sameness. Get along. Laugh. Cry. Talk about life or other stuff or bad television shows or cool shoes or good peanut butter froyo or what it feels like to be lonely.

Friendship is one big beautiful example that the world is bigger than you are. That you aren’t really alone up there stuck in your own head because there are other actual people out there in their heads, and you can talk to them and be people together. It’s really weird. Very strange. Very great.