Q

Between completing my applications, stocking up on smart-casual (I have a pathetic range of work clothes) and paying bills on AXS machines, I started reading my archives. What the Lord of the Flies said about a brighter childhood becomes relevant. I don’t know how this hits everyone – or when, but it happened to me this morning when I was eating a Kit Kat chocolate egg my grandma got me (they discontinued Kinder Surprises, you can only get them in German markets now), somehow fully expecting to see some kind of gimmick in it, but it was empty. And just like that I realized that I’ve been watching myself and my friends grow out of childhood. I don’t mean grow up. I mean grow out of something. Yes we unanimously still hold on to those childlike activities because as a group we are afraid of becoming jaded and boring. We do dance dares, we refuse to act responsibly, we watch Hannah Montana and make loud obnoxious sounds to defy the calm, steady tones adults are expected to have. I am somewhat grateful we have all that, a reminder that we can still have fun. But it doesn’t change that we’ve grown out of things that are much more than kidult activities. I have a photo of G and C in my phone, dressed up all wacky in our St. Nicks pinafores for their little hosting gig in the Drama Studio. Every time I see that photo (and I’m usually strictly non-sentimental), I get a strange feeling of loss. I’ve watched G face things no one should face in her two years, and without having to tell each other, we know something inside her would have changed. We grow out and learn things, learn that things we’ve believed without question for nineteen straight years might not be true. Don’t allow it to break us, hold on to one another, can only get stronger, but it is true that life isn’t as pretty as we wished it’ll be. I’m not terribly upset, I can only say it’s a pity – so this is growing up (out). Growing up, I have that. I’ve formed solid world views I spent years developing, I fully understand now what it is to love a friend (to feel concern for them more than you can for yourself), I can sense the center of control extending so strongly in my mind it scares me sometimes. I’m not saying I’m brilliantly intelligent, which I kind of am, but. If there is one thing my mind does well, it’s that I can categorize, compartmentalize, merge, delete, drag-drop, basically computer-function anything that goes through it. (G says, don’t over-rationalize too much) But I can’t help it. Because I know at the end of the day my mind is the only thing I have full control over, so I can’t possibly allow it to go. Archives tells me this thread of thought begun in mid-09, that was where I started to hoard and build a command center in my brain that would be absolutely infallible. That was my first sign of growing up/out. The first fully formed thought that nothing that happens to me can ever get to me. I mean, because I’m not a Vulcan (unfortunately), I still feel of course. But it takes me maybe half a day to get over things. To think it through so thoroughly I realize there’s no point sinking into it anymore. My logic goes like this. Yes you’ve done something I cannot forgive you for, but if I let it upset me – I’m the one responsible for myself being upset. Besides, it is your brain that has incited this wrong, this fault. Yes I am disappointed in you, yes I can now see you weren’t the mature adult I’ve always seen you as, but so what. It’s such a removed thing. You’re the one doing the wrong. I have done nothing, my mind has done no wrong, tripped no wires, breached no trust. As long as my mind is intact and unblemished, I can not care. This is how scarily it works, this is growing out. She tried to appeal to me; you wouldn’t know until you’re in my situation. I told her firmly no. It hasn’t happened yet but I have complete confidence I’ll never do whatever you have done – and I’ve never believed so strongly in anything I’ve said before. That was when I knew I’m finally done forming the beliefs I’ll keep from now on. Growing out. While my Vulcan-ian brain system scares the shit out of me, I’ve decided – whatever I cannot feel for myself, I do it for my friends. In a way, this has already been true for a while though I’ve never consciously registered it. How do you worry for yourself when you know whatever happens you’ll be fine? That’s needless worry. But I have no control over my friends and how they take things. I have influence yes, but because I’m not them I’ll always be uncertain of how things can go wrong for them. ‘Just tell yourself to stop thinking about it,’ ‘Don’t let whatever he says affect you at all,’ ‘Try to see it from this vantage point’, and they say yes I know I know, but I can’t. And when I so desperately want them to be able to, so they can be alright, I know it’s not something I can do for them.

There’s a lake where all things lost go and you have to dive in so deep that you feel like you’re almost crushed before you find it, hand it over to the friends you love and watch them put it on and they smile like they did five years ago and you feel like there’s nothing in the world that can take you away from this happiness.