It’s true…
I no longer see any of my friends.
Sorry, this another one of my misanthropic rants, so tune out if you’re looking for
the latest property prices or whatever.
You may remember I made a video earlier this year titled “The Unnecessary Complexities
of Human Interaction” where I introduced you to my colour-coded friends.
We were a tabletop role-playing gaming group that played once a fortnight.
Mr Black was the so-called Game Master who ran the games.
He’s got a preference for dark horror.
Now I’m not talking The Walking Dead or Stranger Things — I’m talking about true
terror.
I won’t go into the gory detail, but let’s just say that sometimes the games were truly
frightening.
Plus, I’d like to keep this video G-rated.
We would typically game on a Saturday night and I wouldn’t get home till the early hours
of Sunday morning (one reason being that Mr Black lives so far out of town).
Due to the content of the games, I often had trouble falling asleep, and when I did sleep,
I was often plagued by nightmares.
Consequently, Sundays were a bit of a write-off.
I was tired, I was upset, and I was probably not a very nice person to be around.
As I mentioned previously, Mr Black would always send out a confirmatory email to make
sure everyone was still coming, but then earlier this year, the group decided that Facebook
was a better alternative.
I begrudgingly went along with it (not being a big fan of Facebook myself) and continued
playing games of darkness thought up in the depths of Mr Black’s mind.
The group used Facebook like it was the latest new thing.
Constant back-and-forth messages filling up my inbox.
But the darkness grew.
The game was getting too dark for me and the people were not really making things much
better.
I was already at breaking point and then a Facebook message came through from Mr Black,
“Incidentally, Mr Brown, this group for comms was a darn fine idea.”
For whatever reason, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Mr Black had already publicly congratulated Mr Brown a number of times for “discovering”
Facebook in 2019.
I had already gritted my teeth through the previous orations, but this time, it was enough
already.
I can’t bear people receiving excessive praise, especially for mundane things.
So I replied,
“We managed with email for almost 3 years... don't know what went wrong with that”
A day or two went by and nobody had replied.
I sensed I had pissed some people off, but quite frankly, I had enough.
I wrote back,
“Hi guys, I'm going to pull a Mr Blue and take a hiatus from gaming.
My heart's just not in it at the moment.
Indeterminate time frame.
I'll be contactable by the humble, but quaint, email.
Enjoy”
I then removed myself from the group.
Mr Blue had previously quit gaming a number of years prior, but came back into it not
so long ago.
I decided it was my turn to leave, and quite frankly, I haven’t looked back.
Mr Brown and Mr Blue checked in on me to see if I was okay, but Mr Black has never contacted
me again.
Apart from a couple of chance encounters on the street or at the supermarket, I actually
haven’t seen any of my friends for the last four or five months.
If I don’t game with them, I don’t see them.
It seems that the only thing that we had in common was role-playing games.
Without these games, we have no other reason to see each other.
I vaguely remember having fun with them back when I was in my late teens and early twenties,
but now the games have become too dark.
It’s no longer about having fun, but more about escaping reality.
The fun has almost all but been replaced with stories of horror.
These friends of mine have been pulled into a world of darkness which they seemingly cannot
escape.
They obviously find the fantasy world more bearable than their real lives, and consequently,
they spend the bulk of their free time in shadows.
My only option was to leave, and consequently, I have no friends because of it.
But don’t feel sad for me Dear Listener.
I’m not depressed.
I’m not upset.
I actually think I’ve found my real self.
I wasn’t playing these games because I enjoyed them.
I was playing them because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.
I thought in order to maintain my friendships with these people, I had to do what they wanted
me to do, even if by doing so would adversely affect my mental health.
But I was wrong… and I’ve been wrong for a long time.
Almost all of my friendships I was doing not for me, but for a faceless audience.
Despite there not being a societal rule saying that we must have friends, there certainly
is an expectation.
Normal people have friends.
I guess, I’m just not that normal.
Don’t get me wrong, just because I don’t see my friends doesn’t mean I don’t see
people.
I still have a loving family that I see every day.
I still go to work a couple of days a week and meet students from all around the globe.
I’m actually quite friendly with some of them, but I certainly wouldn’t classify
them as friends.
I still see other parents at my children’s schools, and I’m happy to have a chat with
old acquaintances that I bump into on the street.
But having close friends in my life has turned into more of a bane than a boon.
Friends haven’t brought me happiness or improved my self-esteem.
In most cases, they’ve done the opposite.
They’ve made my life difficult.
Friends have become more of an irritant than anything else.
Despite this, I don’t blame them.
This is entirely on me.
I obviously have something in me which finds it hard to connect closely with other people.
When Mr Black was publicly praising Mr Brown for discovering Facebook Messenger, it irritated
me beyond belief.
These little social quirks obviously get to me, so I suppose I’m just not well-suited
to have close friends.
But guess what...
I think I like it.
I think not having friends is my default state.
I think it fits well with my personality and my minimalist nature.
Now that I’ve given up playing these games, I have a lot more free time to focus on the
things that are truly important to me.
Spending my days whiling away in a Gothic horror fantasy world was not what I was put
on this Earth to do.
Unfortunately, that’s what all of my friends do, and consequently, I don’t see them anymore.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when
men are afraid of the light.”