I certainly don’t want to get involved where I’m not wanted, but I used to have plenty of friends who didn’t know me, either. It’s kind of why I started writing about myself here, because I was tired of hiding everything. The people who never really cared will drift away if you let them, but if someone is particularly tenacious, I’d say it’s best just to be honest about it. If they know that you totally do not want them in your life, and continue to insist, that’s harder to deal with. But you’ll never make any progress if you just wait for them to figure it out on their own.…Because they probably never will.
Addendum to Demi’s very well-written post. A few notes.
Don’t forget that while you - demi, cameron, vael - say, “we have friends that didn’t/don’t know us”, it’s likely the same for those friends. I can’t say I knew many of my friends well. It’s harder for males, who have trouble opening up with their feelings, and it’s especially harder for a male to know the opposite sex without one party assuming love for the other.
I hope you aren’t under the impression, Cameron, that you are the only one who pretends. Like you’re the only one with a hidden truth that you actually don’t like someone - the truth is people just use others to kill their boredom, and the feelings for another don’t have to reciprocate.
The latest friend I could have had, I formally pushed away. I told him my wisdom, what I’ve learned from dealing with people. I said, “While you can be fun, I see the same patterns as people I shouldn’t spend my time with. I can see where this is going.” and, being utopian, he took it just fine.
~
I got tired of my other friends. People at work will call me “kid”, like, “he’s a good kid”, “kid, you’re ridiculous”. It’s recurring enough to have numbed myself to it at this point, but since I process things literally, it still hits cognition. They call me kid because I’m tiny, (only 5'3) and young. In some societies, males were men when they had their first successful hunt. In our society, a man is one who grows old enough to stop looking like a kid.
The ones called men - and I’m not being sensationalist here - shocked me. I had no idea adults still listened to rap. I know a father of four, nice guy, lots of fun, who listens to generic rap shit. Many men at my workplace listen to it. Mind boggled. It just didn’t occur to me that such an immature genre was listened to by these men. Outside of work, their attire matches their musical tastes. They raise kids, do their job just fine, smoke some weed and live happily. I’m the kid and these are the adults.
I felt more like an adult around this summer. I cut my hair off, got some sharper clothes. Met Eve. My other friends were/are busy with marijuana, some soft drug trips here and there. Alcohol. They were busy living life by seeing other people. Vael doesn’t live life because he views it through a monitor. They’re busy living “real life”. I’ve begun a career and family at 22.
They’ll call me “kid”, and yet there’s just no other word I can use to describe these people.