Reih7’s Weblog

This is how I figured out that I’m fucked:

Last week I got dinner with my sister’s best friend, Boy. He’s about 6 years younger than me so this hardly counted as a date, but I’d never spent much time with him before so I was prepared to bring my social A-game to avoid any awkward silences.

It turns out I didn’t have to worry. We spent all of dinner (1.5 hours of it at the family-run japanese place I picked…) talking about…him. Boy talked the ENTIRE time, reciting his “life story” as if it was planned. It read (sounded?) like a novel: “When I was in middle school I started questioning religion and wanted to find what made is all connect.” I can’t make this up; this kid is crazy. He apparently spend middle and high school wondering what humans all have in common. In the process he converted religions 5 different times under the guidance of various religious leaders, learned a few languages, and eventually decided that *teaching* is the universal connection that he was looking for.

Now, at the age of 19, he’s a partner in a first-class tutoring company where he got a free car, 15% of the profits and all bonuses, etc. He’s paying his entire tuition AND his parent’s bills (did I mention that his parents both lost their jobs and savings and have three children to support?) He literally puts me to shame.

As I shovelled cold soba into my mouth I thought about this kid’s somewhat tragic situation. He seems like he has everything going for him…as per my mom, he’s extremly smart, onviously financially well off, highly motivated and a good, dedicated son, brother, friend, etc. … but he’s just too young. Too young for all of it! He hasn’t grown into his life yet and he just has no choice but to keep on living it. Boy can’t remember a time when he wasn’t working. He sleeps about 3 hours a night and divides his time between classes, providing for this family, teaching, and managing his company. Unreal.

Compared to him, I’m ridiculous. I’m a spoiled brat of my parent’s providings, keep a stock of bubbles in my home for emergency bad days and get my kicks by swinging on the swingset by my house. In short, I’m a child in this old body, and he’s a 30 year old trapped in college.

After dinner Boy wanted to walk around downtown. We end up walking by my favorite area, with the candy shops where you can see them making caramel apples. By now I’d almost forgotten that Boy was with me and was just walking around and enjoying the scenery. I run up and press my hands and nose to the glass to get a better view. ”Look!! You can see them making the apples!!” My exclaimations leave fog on the window. Before Boy can reply, my attention turns to some commotion behind me and I turn to see a new cupcake shop across the street. “Oh my GOD!, a cupcake shop!! We have GOT to go!”.  I step off the curb, looking for cars before running across the street. Boy follows behind and says “You are a little kid! C’mon, I’ll buy us cupcakes.”

…And in that moment I knew I was done for.

This is the ugly truth: No one wants someone like me. No one of the 25-30 set would act like I do, getting excited about stupid things like candy, cupcakes, cities at night. It’s weird and pathetic and…out of place. I wish I could say I was faking it or looking for attention because at least then I would just be lame. No, no, the truth is that I’m just this way. I honestly don’t see myself ever being anything different. What makes my day? Seeing a bird hop funny, picking a colorful flower on the side of the road, hearing the ice cream truck, putting my toes into streams and walking on the rocks, watching documentaries about the giant squid. I hum to myself when I walk, I spend lunch breaks on my back on the grass in the hospital courtyard talking on the phone and watching the clouds, I cry when I see rodeos on TV.

You see what I’m getting at. Some people this it’s “cute” to be a kid at heart, that there’s something innocent and fun and charming about it. You know what? It’s none of those things. Nowadays anyway, it’s a big fucking bother. When I’m myself, people don’t take me seriously. When I try to fake it and be “refined” and “mature”, I fuck it up horribly or just end up miserable. 

The truth is that I was forced into adulthood (probably much like everyone else) but in a different way. I never had any qualms about paying my bills or finding a job; politics or buying a house. Instead it’s the freedoms of youth that I just can’t give up. From behind my eyes the world is still the way it was when I was 10: beautiful, moldable, mysterious, welcoming. The rules that we were supposed to learn when we were growing up somehow went over my head. Maybe it was because of the whole special education thing, where we were in the same class with the same people since third grade and never had to build social defences to “fit in”. Or maybe it was because my family never bothered to correct the social parts of me and instead focused on the academic parts. … or maybe it was because, since I was little, I’ve had a great big dislike of “adults”, who I thought they were petty and unreasonable and far too standard.

All of this was never a problem before because I was able to find other people like me and we could make a small bubble together around which everyone else would swirl and we’d sit inside watching and laughing. Now that everyone’s gone and I’m surrounded by all these mature-ish classmates, it’s so much more obvious just how much of a misfit I’m turning out to be.

The worst part though is that it just makes this mate-seeking thing that much harder. It’s already a struggle to match the difficult things: life goals, finances, parents. For me, I have to find someone that loves these weird child-like things about me, and preferably someone who has some of the same. Someone who can throw social structure out the window in exchane for some free-form living.   Someone to go exploring with, I guess. I think that that kind of person is just….very rare. In terms of probability it’s probably not someone who I’ll be finding in this lifetime.

So what will it be for me then? A lifetime of lonliness with everlasting hope for more, or will I finally find someone to build a bubble with me and watch the world spin around while we stay together in our self-made reality? Stupid fucked up useless questions to be asking myself so late at night when I should be studying for my boards.

Sigh.