Half-person.

[arrowwhiskers]

Sometimes I feel like I am a half-person, like I am just a shell of blood and bones and organs and there is nothing real to me.
I feel like people all around me look, and they see me, and they see my emptiness. They see that I am an empty person and then they glance away and forget the moment and I am no one.

They've always done that. But before there were a couple who didn't, and they were the only ones who mattered. Here I am a stranger to everybody. Before I used to see a potential friend in every stranger's glance, but now I just feel their eyes pass through their potential friendship with me and deem it worthless.

Even after almost an entire semester, I don't have a life here. My life is still in Boston. Which is NOT to say I don't have friends. But I think the only people who actually truly give a shit about me here are Ray and Maria, and I met them both online. As much as I adore them, they do not anchor me in this life--most of our interactions are online as well. There is not a single person for whom it is necessary or even really that important that I am *here*.
So I don't really have a real life, not in Arizona. And I really am trying to make one. I'm trying to move on, yet failing--not for a wavering desire, not for uncertainty in my path, not for turning too often to look behind me--but for a lack of something *in me* that other people see and find attractive. I don't know how to make friends--real friends, whose presence actually matters. I really don't. I don't know how it happened the first time...how I made friends before. It just kind of happened. I don't know how to repeat it. I don't know how to turn myself into a whole person, one that people actually see. -_-

I don't know since when it's been Rai-is-emo week, but I'm sorry...

Hiatus on AIM and LJ until Wednesday night (maybe?), since I have let things pile up, yet again.

Comments

[skipperjam.livejournal.com]

hmmm so, i've been in vancouver for coming on three years now, and i still haven't made friends like the friends i have in tucson. but that, i accept, is probably because i never will. and not so much because of me, but because i can't imagine ever finding such people twice. that's because, coming out of high school, i found in my close friends a deep friendship that i can only really liken to true love. i mean, i don't expect to find that again. i have a few friends here in vancouver who i know have that- that deep friendship, and seeing them interact with each other sends pangs of nostalgia to me, but, well, so it goes.

i would say it's curious to me to imagine tucson from the perspective of wishing to be somewhere else except that i also miss vancouver, and when i go to tucson, i may be just as homesick for canada. although, still, it won't be the same sort of incontrollable, deep homesick that comes of history and engrained smiles and smells and sights.

the best way to make friends is to just figure out how to live without them, and then become interested in the people around you. i know it's hard. i know.. i've been there, and i'm still there even now, even with lots of good acquaintances and some really close friends who i care dearly for, here in vancouver, sometimes i still feel the emptiness.

do an art project! spend some time walking with yourself and just listening to the things whistling around in your heart and mind that you would like to be telling your close friends. just sort of hold yourself.

okay one last thing that's helped me. don't think about what strangers/potential friends see in you, think about what you see in them. what you like about them. don't know? ask them, spend time with them, get to know them.

sorry for rambling so much.. i've been thinking about this a lot lately too. i hope it turns out well for you!

[arrowwhiskers.livejournal.com]

That is actually a really interesting idea--looking for things in other people and not worrying so much about your own self. I think I shall try it. :)

The thing is that I do think that people can make deep heart-friends anywhere they go. Like last year the people I met, I could tell that if I spent more time with them and let the years pile up, I would definitely get to that level of closeness with them (but didn't for simple lack of time). I think I may just be ridiculously fortunate that I have met such wonderful people, and happened to have had the opportunity to become friends with them.

I think that's most of my problem. Inflated expectations. I have a lot of trouble with that--being happy with how life IS, rather than how I'd like it to be. But it is a good goal ^^

Good luck to you in this arena as well <3