I have this friend, former friend ; former best friend in fact. The former part is as fresh as these words, I've just decided on it. This friend and I met in high school, way back in the days for I am now old enough to be seeking employment (something he will never have to worry about).
Our friendship was for me something almost straight out of a piece of fanfiction romance. First year. There was this cool, handsome and popular yet never boastful boy, who managed to be both himself and a social animal. Pretty much everyone knew and liked him in our class, and he was elected president (equivalent) by a landslide.
And sat next to him, in French class, there happened to be me. An overly shy, socially awkward misfit who dared speak to no one. Also a boy, also straight, just to not make things confusing. It's a tale old as time and one you probably already recognize if you're familiar: In no time, the extravert adopted the introvert and took him out to all sorts of walks.
This friendship was at the time a real breath of fresh air for me. At last, I had a male friend who was similar enough to me that we could talk about whatever subjects a 16 years old straight boy might get passionate about, like Counter Strike or history, but with whom I could also allow myself to be vulnerable and who would almost never bully or make me feel less of myself. In fact, many of our conversations resembled therapy sessions, of which I was always the patient, with my friends calmly and patiently asking questions to dig into my autistic brain and get me to express and realize my own feelings. I never really quite understood what was in it for him, but it never felt like I was forcing it. Maybe because I was too oblivious to realize what emotional labour was at the time, maybe not. I will never know.
This friend was a lot of things I wish I could be, and also a great deal I couldn't understand. At the time, I was just as interested in knowledge as he was, but too lazy to be spending all of my available hours studying for good grades and spending long minutes after class asking teachers complicated questions. At least at the time I thought I was lazy. I know now that play and leisure is an incredibly important part of a human's good functioning. I don't quite know how he managed to pull it off. Perhaps his nature, perhaps he was nurtured as a kid with liquid ambition in his baby bottle. Probably a mix of both.
He was popular, but also himself, like I said. He could not care less about being dressed trendy, which I also wouldn't have, if I hadn't been bullied for it in middle school and struggled to make friends as a result. He did not have social media because of how much they infringed on privacy, which I was equally just as concerned over, but at the time being out of groupchats meant missing out. That never did seem to bother him. He had another best friend who was a trendy cool kid who kept him warm in all the cooler social circle, and I only had myself. Back then, our main mode of interaction, besides seeing one another, was texting.
Not the kind of quick on and off texting throughout the day. Instead we'd write each other lengthy messages filled with what we thought was meaning, for conversations that would last over thousands and thousands of words and have cool down periods of days, weeks. This last part is important. My friend was always a very busy man. At the time, still, he was still able to make time for contact with me.
The one thing I was good at, back then, was video games. I still remember the look of amazement on his face as, one afternoon in his house, I took the mouse and keyboard he offered me and started headshot-ing people left and right on Counter Strike: Source. "Why don't you reload ? -Because I still have bullets in my gun, and a single AK shot to the head is enough to kill" or something along the lines of which. I had however not read Da Vinci Code, a book that laid next to his bed, next to a lot of other really complicated ones (I thought at the time). In my house, the pages of Da Vinci Code served as a fire starter.
High school happened, and then it was over. As life tends to go, we began to see each other much less often as I was entering the university part of my life, the not-good one, and he was starting Science-Po, which is where they train the "Elite" of the French nation. I can't recall if the jealousy had already begun back then. I think it is safe to assume it had and I had yet to realize it.
One of the turning points of our friendship was when I was invited to celebrate his 20th birthday. Mine had already passed, and this time he wished it to me. There, in this big family-gathered celebration, I got to realize fully just how different of a background he and I were from. While his family probably wasn't financially much better off than mine, they were better read, better cultured people, while the socioeconomics of my own family seemed brutish and culturally sterile. Nobody noticed it and at the time I obviously told nobody. It wasn't my party ; how selfish could I be to be thinking about myself during my best friend's big life celebration party ? Yet I was.
Studies went on, "Life" happened and happened over again and our contact faded to a much more sporadic form. He went to Russia, on a de-facto Erasmus trip, where he cozied up with the Russian Elite, the Putin supporters and their lavish lifestyles. He and his friends realized they could just bribe their professors with wine and would go on solo trips around Russia and the caucasus. Back then I became to feel intensely Jealous. What the hell was I doing with my own life ? Certainly not that. Maybe if I *really* wanted, I could emulate it to a degree. But I lacked the initiative, the courage, the social ability to do something like this, and more importantly, a *raison d'être* to such a venture. And I had no friends to with. I was doing virtually nothing with my life. I still am. I have not killed myself because on shiny days, the chemistry inside my brain is convincing enough that the lump of flesh I am should remain animated.
The last time I saw this friend was when I visited him over in Paris, the Capital, the Great City where everything happens and where you are nothing if not taking part in it. We sat on the quays of the Seine with a third friend, drank vodka and smoked cigarettes as we each unpacked the evolution of our lives. His was of course by far the most fascinating, it's everything I've already mentioned and more. After that, the last fragments of him I received were words on an encrypted texting app. News of him being somewhere in Central Asia or North Africa. The best I could manage was Poland, where I completed another degree. Who knows what kind of fucking reason sent him all the way there, places I'll probably never visit, digging the gap in our respective knowledge of the world that I'll probably never catch up on.
This is a very compact summary of the history of this friendship. My friend, whom I have not named and will continue not to name, is not the main character of this story. He's merely one of the driving forces for what I call my Fear of Missing Life. Family meetings do almost just as good a job at reminding me I am not traveling enough, not doing enough adult things, I am growing old and the planet will not wait for me. It has already been too much of a time spent not living. We've all got the same, limited amount of time to do what we want, and I cannot help but feel like I am making a terrible use of it. What caused me to be such a recluse hermit while others have the thirst and the energy, the ambition to be out there, whether it's beyond the stupidity of a tourist taking vacations or not ?
And why do I hate myself so much over it ? Not only myself, I hate my friend over it. I wish I could say the reason I am mad at him is that he's been basically ghosting me, remembering about my existence on his own birthday or for new year texts. I wish I had this much integrity.
I am mad at him for being in the Caucasus on his own, without anyone telling him to be there, for having the chance to visit Uzbekistan and Tunisia and for soon being a part of the "Elite" (the guard dogs of the Bourgeoisie, which he already knows how unfair they make our world, but lacks the theory to not join them). Granted, the whole "ghosting" part gives me enough of a reason to severe contact. It will make me feel better about it at least for a while. As I am writing these words, in another language, which allows for emotional distance, I realize none of this, this issue, is as close to being over, dealt with, with me being over it as I initially thought.
Who knows, maybe some day I'll write an update over it. Maybe that day the chemistry in my brain will have irreversibly changed for the better, I will have seen the sights and done the trips I always wished I had, I will be a fulfilled adult man with a stable life, instead of a failson filled with remorse and regret, and just as scared of missing life as ever.
Hopefully then will my mind be inhabited with healthier thoughts rather than blind and deaf hatred.
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