The short answer:

I guess not.

The long answer:

When I was in high school, I had a friend who lived across the street from me. I say that he was a friend because we had hung out with the same group of people since when we were little, but not because I particularly liked his personality or his interests or his appearance or his demeanor or his clothes or his existence. Nevertheless, we were pretty good friends, and we would often walk together to and from the bus stop.

One day near the end of our senior year of high school, some of us received letters from our homeroom teachers that we had written to ourselves at the beginning of middle school. I never wrote such a letter, but the idea was that you included things in which your future self might be interested, such as your hopes, your dreams, your desires, and in some particularly insightful cases, cash. Then years later, you could marvel at how much your life had changed and how much the dollar had depreciated.

My friend happened to receive such a letter from himself, and we talked about it on the way back from the bus stop that day. In it, he had spent a little time talking about who his friends were, and at one point he wrote that he had this really smart friend who lived across the street. I was prepared to act flattered, but then he added that he had written afterwards, “God, I hate [QM].” Then there was an awkward silence. I didn’t exactly know what to say, and why did he feel compelled to tell me that? In any case, we were just about home, so that was that. I took solace in the fact that I didn’t really like anything about him anyway.

Sometimes I think I don’t really know what a friend is. I know plenty of people whom I would casually call friends, but are they really my friends? Most such people I only know on a very superficial level. I spent a lot of time in high school hanging out with my so-called friends, but now that I think about it, I really didn’t like many of them at all.

In some ways, having friends has always just been one big formality for me. The problem is that when you’re little, you don’t really get to choose your friends. Your friends are the people in your class or the people who live close to you. As you get older, it becomes less restrictive, but really, even in high school there’s still not that much choice about it. Sometimes it just seems like a pointless ritual that I don’t really understand.

This does not mean that I don’t want or need friends. It’s nice to have friends, especially when you’re strapped for cash or you need a ride to the airport, and I guess the socializing is okay, too, sometimes. And I would love to have a really close friend—a “best friend,” if you will—but I have no idea how one acquires such a thing. (As you may recall, I’m not exactly skilled at dealing with other people.) I’m not even sure how one qualifies as a best friend—I think ice cream and slumber parties are somehow involved—but I am pretty sure that I have not had one, nor have I ever been one for anyone else. The fact is that I have just not had that many friends in my life, and none of them have I known or have known me well enough to qualify as a best friend.

Sometimes I think that it’s a real shame, that people don’t know what they’re missing out on. Objectively, I think that I have a lot of qualities that generally make for a good friend. I’m loyal, aggreable, and unassuming. I can be serious or playful, honest or sarcastic, and insightful or inane as fits the situation. (Also, I’m good at keeping secrets, because who would I tell?) However, I’m pretty sure that I don’t come off as such, and that to most people I just seem sort of quiet and aloof, which is not really the best way to attract friends. Another problem is that I don’t like a lot of people; it’s not that I dislike them, it’s just that I don’t like them. As a result, it’s hard for me to find someone that I like enough to express myself. Perhaps I’m just destined not to befriend or be friendly.

There has been one person that I would almost say could have been my best friend, but I don’t think we’re friends anymore. But since that story tends to get me sort of depressed, maybe I’ll save it for when I’m in a friendlier mood.

Cheers,
-qm