a season, a reason, or a lifetime

so my friend the big H forwarded a friendship email around that said that there are 3 types of friendships out there: friends who come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. lifetime friends are easy to decipher. seasonal friends are people who come into your life for a particular span of time, usually brought together by geography or something like that. a reason friend is a person who is in your life to fulfill a particular purpose and then is gone. i read this email and then promptly erased it due to the forwarded nature of it and my thinking forwards are pretty much bullshit most of the time anyways. but my friend Julie brought the email up in conversation a couple of weeks ago and i thought about it again. the words ring true, but i feel like it's missing something. the forward makes it sound like these friends are all over the place and perhaps they are, but certainly not in proportion. and friendship changes a lot and there are often time when i think i have one of those lifetime friends and it turns out that it's nothing more than an ephemeral fart in the wind.

this year has been particularly tough and there's a part of me that knows i couldn't have gotten this far without some of my so called "friends". however, i've lost quite a few friends this year (lost in that we are no longer friends, or they have passed away, or the dynamic has completely changed to where the friendship is no longer recognizable) and the one lesson i keep coming back to is that i need to be more guarded. i like to wear my heart on my sleeve; i'm bad at hiding my emotions, but i find that whenever i'm honest, i find myself getting kicked in the proverbial nuts. and i feel like all of this is culminating to a huge god-like sign or intervention where a greater power than myself will kick the shit out of me to teach me a lesson about letting people in. now, i know a lot of this has to do with the fact that i'm feeling hurt, disappointed, lonely, and for the fact that i have a bottle of very cheap tokyo wine in me but i still felt this way before the wine earlier today and will probably feel this way in the morning. why are the lifetime friends so hard to find? why do so many friendships seem like more than they are? is it because i want them to be? could it be that i'm a lot needier than i imagine myself to be?

my other rant has to do with friends who compartmentalize their lives. i had a bit of a fight/argument with my japanese friend the other night because he is a huge fan of compartmentalizing his lie. i'd asked him why none of us hadn't met his girlfriend before despite the fact that they had been seeing each other for at least four years and known each other since they were children. he said it was because he didn't want to blend different aspects of his life together. so i said that it seems to me that people who feel the need to compartmentalize their lives that way tend to be limited friends, or that i see them as limited friends. he got very upset with this and demanded to know why he had to share his entire life with me. now, this is certainly blowing the whole issue out of proportion. i don't think that people need to share all aspects of their lives with their friends but i do think that friends who feel the need to create strict bifurcations in their lives tend to be limited friends. if a person compartmentalizes me into one aspect of their lives not to bleed into the other aspects, then i'm not sure that i want that person in the other aspects of my life. this friend has already bled into other part of my life. he used to be my student, now he's my friend, and he knows things about me that i other people don't know. but upon inspection of his contribution to this friendship (after my realization that i am simply just one part of his compartmentalized lifestyle), i've come to see that he shares very little of himself compared to me and that makes me wholly uncomfortable. i am a firm believer in the grade school tit-for-tat dynamic which is why i do not confide in friends who don't confide in me. a balance needs to be kept. and i don't believe in the double standard. given this new information, does that mean my friend really isn't my friend? was he a season that is now over?

all of this over-analyzing gives me a headache. so much of how i deal with people comes from my gut instinct but i find my gut failing me in the long run these days. but perhaps i shouldn't blame it on my GI system. maybe it's just that i ignore the signs even when they're there. i know i ignored quite a bit with the recent loss of a person i considered to be a good friend. i know there are times when denial really is my best friend. it just sucks that it has to hurt so badly. i wish it was easier. but i know that is an overly-simplistic view of life. that's life my compartmentalizing friends outlook. life isn't a neat, easily divisible pie that you can store into different ziplock containers. life is messy and painful and disproportionate and dramatic and sad and wonderful and frightening. it's not supposed to be simple and manageable. that's not life. and i know that's not what i want. and perhaps i just need to grow a thicker skin to realize that a season or reason friend is just as important as a lifetime one, their impact is just for a much shorter amount of time. and by taking these relationships and integrating them into my life (even if it's just for the past or some memories), i value and cherish them in the only way that's important, my way. it's time to cue the sinatra.

Jews, Jackasses, and Tacos

having grown up in southern California, i have had the priviledge of coming in contact with people of all races, creeds, and backgrounds. and where i'm from, there are plenty of Jews so i never thought anything about it. afterall, the media is saturated with them. Seinfeld, Spielberg, Adam Sandler: all Jews. To hear about passover and Chanukah and study them was part of our curriculum. so you can imagine my surprise on Sunday when i found out that two people i know (both of them Australian, mind you) said that they had never seen or known one jew in their entire lives! as the japanese would say, "Eeeeehhhh?!" i found it astaunding that in this day and age (not to mention how small the world keeps getting) that there are people out there who still haven't met any jews. but at the same time, i suppose i've never met a native antarctican so that makes me a bit of a weirdo in some circles as well. i guess i wasn't prepared for such a shock.

now if it just ended there, that would be one thing but now that this asshole has met the only jew he's ever known, he's making all kinds of jew jokes which is making this poor girl very uncomfortable. it reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where that dentist converted to judaism just for the jokes. what an asshole.

this same asshole came to Taco nite (one of the most expensive dinners to host) despite the fact that he invited himself and no one wanted him there. i don't mind putting forth the time and money for my FRIENDS but for other assholes? no thanks.

and even more on the asshole front and Taco Nite, so it wasn't just the one guy but there were some others who weren't invited who came as well. and they invited other undesirables! where does it say that a party at yoko's is a free for all? that's balls not to mention very rude. i thought we coveredx this in the lesson about party invitations . . . .