Echoes from the past

In first year my brother forced me to read a book on proper study habits. After 20 pages I stopped reading it, for two reasons. First, I was getting marked on first year psych, but not on this book, so I made an immature attempt at cost-benefit analysis. Second, the first chapter was devoted to establishing a dichotomy between friendship and good grades. Every page went further to suggest that friends do nothing but waste your time and stand in the way of good grades; friends will hold you down, and step on you if given the chance to better their own grades at your expense. I'm all about breaking dichotomies, so I set out on a path to mediate between friendship and good grades. I figured I would find the 'middle-path' and enjoy the best of both worlds.

My friendships and my grades to date are both mediocre.

Kinda ironic. I sought after mediation and ended up in mediocrity. I say my grades are mediocre because I'm tiptoeing between a B- and a C+ average. As for my friendships...

They feel very one-sided, for the most part. Some nights I stay up late just thinking about the emotional load that one or more of my friends has dropped on me, over coffee, over msn, or over the phone. Sometimes I can't fall asleep until I've come to a consensus about what to tell Tanya or Annie or Tampon or Yoni (or...) about their 'situation.' I wake up the next morning on 4-hrs sleep, go to school, go to work, come home, try to study, try to work out, then check my phone before bed, just to prepare myself for another situation.

It's not that vicious a cycle. It's not everyday. It's maybe 3-times a week, but it's enough to keep me distracted. And some weeks I get through without hearing even one. But I don't offer thanks for the break, because there's no time to stop and thank when midterms come around. I also don't offer thanks because I know that I'm not being offered a break because I have a test that week, I'm being offered a break because everyone else has a mid-term that week!

It's kind of like the breaks at work; nobody cares that I didn't get to have breakfast, so I'm in fact eating breakfast from 3-4pm somewhere on Kingston road. Rather, it's simply most beneficial for the bank to schedule my breaks from 3-4, when Toronto's busy commuting, and have me tending to the lineups during peak hours. Then when things calm down around 4, I'll be back at my wicket, ready to serve.

I've never brought this up before, because I've never blamed my friends for this. If I resented my friends personally for this, I'd likely not still be their friend. I don't think many people even realise the full-effect of pouring out their grievances. A substance poured has to be caught by something. That something is me, the emotional sponge.

As with a sponge, sometimes you have to just keep pouring and pouring until it bleeds on its own before you realise that it can't hold anymore. This post is my blood. As with a sponge, most people are so self-satisfied after having finished cleaning the muck that they don't even care to ring the sponge out after they're done with it. At best, they give it a quick squeeze before discarding it for later use; we call those hugs in day-to-day life. So here I lay, soaked with emotional deposits and rank with foul-smelling sediments of sentiment.

I will even be so combative as to ask my friends, "How many hours of sleep have you sacrificed solely for my benefit? How many minutes?" If being a sponge isn't a strong enough analogy to convey the one-sidedness of my friendships, close and far, then let me further say this: I need help.

I need help because what I often get as friendship is mere ear-service, coupled-with uh-huh's and okays, tripled with relating my problem back to their own problems, quadrupled with vague impersonal maxims like, "Everything will end up fine," or "if it's meant to be..." or "that sucks, sorry!" But as much as I resent those phrases I don't even hate the deliverers of them, because behind each of those phrases lies the ultimate phrase, "I don't know what to say."

'I don't know what to say,' is enough to make me believe that people do care, but just can't help. But when you hear it time and again, you start to think that people just don't care to help. And a lot of the time, that's simply the truth. If you haven't heard from me in awhile, and my msn name (aka cry for help) has been shitty for a month, and I've been shaving less often than normal, eating more, and seem more distant, I hope that it isn't exam period, because if it is, I'll be dealing with myself all on my own.

A part of me, as I continue to write this post even wants to apologize for belittling my friendships, because I think my friends mean well. But no, not today.

I'm well aware of the 'holes' to my 'argument' like, "I'm not the easiest person to help" or "My friends aren't psychologists" or "Maybe if I just called all of them up to complain, I'd feel better too!" Actually I tried the last one out on Yoni for about a week, to no avail, I still feel like as much shit as I did yesterday. She tried. And as I write this post, I have Nicole messaging me on msn asking me if everything's okay. I lied as usual. Tonight I lied because I preferred to blog. Most night I lie because I just don't see the point.

"He's a complicated man, and no-one understands him but his woman." As most of you know, I am womanless, so cut the last part of that song out.

So yea, I could cover for my argument easily - and possibly should, what with my Art of Thinking midterm coming up soon - and I could prove that my friendships are one-sided. But I'm not trying to be right. I'm just tired.