Dear Unforgotten Friend,
I was in a program a few days ago, and there was this random guy who decided to play a certain instrument that you used to (and I hope, still) play. It reminded me of how you worked so hard to be good at everything you do, be it playing an instrument, schoolwork, or even making friends.
I think you reaped the fruit of your hard work for some of those things. You played the instrument beautifully (hope I’ve told you about my keyboard fiasco?), as one would expect you to as a result of your hard work. You put your 100% effort into your schoolwork unlike the rest of us, myself included, and that meant you would go to any extent to achieve your goals. I still have no idea how you managed to do that. My mother would tell you that I can’t study without Spotify, and 30 minutes after I start, I’m walking around contemplating about a version of life I will only live if I work.
But there is one thing I noticed you struggled with: making friends. Was it your fault? I never thought so, and I still don’t think so. You always had a tendency to blame yourself for people disliking you, but I can assure you it wasn’t your fault. I will explain my reasoning throughout this “note”.
I met you for the first time when I was in fourth grade. I just moved to a new school, and I was trying to gauge my atmosphere. You caught my attention almost immediately, and I remember thinking, pardon my french: “WHAT AN ANNOYING GUY, JUST SHUT UP AND KEEP YOUR QUESTIONS TO YOURSELF, NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO YOU TALK!!”. I wrote that whole sentence in caps because I would literally yell it to myself in my head.
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say nine-year-old Khyathi was, uhh… not so smart.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I was pretty impressionable as a nine-year-old. Herd mentality would suggest that in a new atmosphere, I would try to imitate the likes and dislikes of my current group of friends. My friends did not like you, so I decided it was right to dislike you as well.
Moreover, I was insensitive and prone to typical human bias. In some ways, you were not that similar to the rest of us: you had a loud voice, and a bass tone that broke quite frequently. You seemed to always be far more thorough than the rest of us were, and wanted to make sure you understood a task before beginning to make progress. None of us had as many questions as you did, and I remember groaning every time you opened your mouth to say something.
Not a good first impression, but what did YOU do wrong to me? Absolutely nothing. Which is why I was being completely irrational.
A few months later, I happened to visit your house. I learned a lot about you as a person. Although nine-year-old Khyathi was stupid, she did like to observe her surroundings, and you seemed quite interesting. Also, there’s one thing everyone has in common: we all like good food. I remember you giving me Rice Krispies Treats when I left your house, and a few days later, you gave me some at school as well. We gradually started talking way more often, and I tried to start seeing you as a friend.
That did not happen very quickly. Through no fault of your own, of course. As usual, I’m wary about referring to someone as my friend. I usually wait a few years before referring to someone as my friend. As one of my acquaintances (see?) put it once, I am a Commitmentphobic Ass.
Our friendship was pretty stagnant for the next 2-3 years. After 5th grade, you got put into a different class, so I did not see you too often, other than during Hindi or Tamil class.
By then, I had a much different opinion on you than I did initially. If someone asked me what I thought about you, I would say I saw you as a generous, sweet and caring individual with a surprisingly good memory [Literally 90% of my friends, git rekt].
I can actually justify each and every single one of those compliments, which is why I typed them. I think you are generous because you devote all of your energy to any relationship that you think is worth your time, and you would give them almost anything in order to show that. When I say “generous”, I obviously don’t mean just material generosity. Your generosity with your affection is very brave, and something I admire because after all of these years, I think I’m “exposing” myself if I call someone a friend.
I think you are sweet and caring because you always emphasized on the little moments that make up every friendship. Whether it is picking up a pencil I dropped, or sitting next to me in Hindi class and talking about random things.
Okay, but your memory seems so irrelevant and misplaced in that sentence. However, to me, that is one of my favourite things about you. All of my friends forget details about my life that I tell them (well, yeah I get I’m not the only person in their lives, but sometimes I doubt they listen listen), but you never did. Every day my bus got to school, you would walk up to my desk, ask me how my evening was the last day after I got home (or how my weekend went). You never maintained eye-contact with me, your eyes always wandered while I told you about a test, a chess tournament, or something random about airplanes or math. I doubted you were actually listening while I was talking to you.
…But then you would come back a few hours, or even a few days later, and ask me an oddly specific question based on information I gave you in that conversation. I would always think to myself: “Since when can anyone remember details with this attention span?!”
That is where I was wrong. Your eyes wandering didn’t mean you weren’t paying attention to me, or what I was saying.
In just a little bit of time, I realized something: you’re not the kind of person whose body language I could read. A bit of a bummer for a person like me, not going to lie. I enjoy reading people, just so I know what I’m getting into. However, you seemed nearly impossible to read.
Honestly though, there was nothing that complicated to know about you. I knew you cared about me, and saw me as a good friend (Not to ignore the fact that I had my weak moments, like that time I was annoyed at you for tattling on me in Hindi class).
And that is exactly where the problem is.
I took you for granted. Not just me, everybody did. We all knew you cared, and it was blatantly obvious that you did. Many people chose to use that against you, through no fault of your own. Even when I was your friend, I initially took way more affection from you than I ever gave you.
And that led us to eighth grade. You always had problems with classmates at school, but it was starting to get worse. Through no fault of your own, you were always bullied for your differences, laughed at, and humiliated both publicly and privately. You thought standing up for yourself was just raising your voice.
I remember one particular person in your class who was sort of a jerk to everyone. In a conversation with me, he was sick enough to believe that the only reason I could “tolerate” you was because you changed your personality around me. He also made a few more comments that are not worth mentioning.
According to my observations, you never changed your personality around me, or anybody. I also never had to “tolerate” you after I got to know you.
Every time you stood up for yourself and raised your voice, everyone in the room would laugh. I think they laughed because every time you said anything rude, it sounded misappropriated. This also seems to be the same reason a toddler would laugh at the thought of a talking house.
The answer to your problems seemed obvious, but also hard to implement: to simply not care.
Eventually, the bullying in your class got so bad that you shifted to my class at the end of eighth grade. That way, things that happened to you were at least a little bit more in my control. I tried to give you company as much as I could (and I hope I succeeded). Like I expected, you were at my desk every morning, to hear about my day, my weekends, how I did on my tests, or pretty much anything I wanted to talk about.
There’s something you probably never noticed. Every time you did that, a few of my friends would stare at me and grin from ear-to-ear, giving me a look of sympathy, like I was suffering while talking to you. I would immediately break eye contact with my friends when they did that, and return to talking to you.
None of this glorifies me as a person. I did my part. I was one of the people laughing at you in some scenarios. I also listened to stories that your former-friends had to say about you.
Having listened to all of those perspectives, I finally realized why you intrigue me so much: you are the human personification of everything that is wrong with society today.
I recently watched this show called The Good Place, which revolved around this idea of giving a human being positive points for every “good” action and negative points for every “bad” action, and a high score leads to one being placed in the Good Place after death.
If I recall correctly, there was a character who essentially guessed the entire philosophy behind this point system while he was alive. He tried to do good things throughout his life in the hope that he will accumulate enough positive points to get into The Good Place. He was so finicky that he actually donated “too much” blood (is that even possible? lmao).
There were two reasons this character did not deserve to go to The Good Place (in my opinion): (i) Selfish Motive: He was only doing good things to end up in The Good Place, and (ii) He tried too hard.
The second one applies to you. Trying too hard never works.
I think in history, there was a point in time where people loved seeing effort, as you can tell by the romantic writing from that period. Now it feels like people admire those who are Comfortably Numb to criticism. It’s the entire basis behind Sigma Rule memes (that I literally binged an hour ago).
The people who disliked you, they may call you annoying. But ask them to describe why you’re annoying. Because you care? Because you ask questions and like to be thorough? Because you’re a good friend who remembers things?
You had all the qualities of a textbook “good friend”. One would think you would be surrounded and loved by all kinds of people throughout your school life, but that wasn’t the case. Through no fault of your own, people decided to single out everything that made you different: your voice, your walking, your questions, etc. to label you and put you in a box.
You know, a few of the important people in my life have nicknames in this blog that start with Mr. [word], but I could not bring myself to find such a nickname for you. What label could I possibly give you? I am no different from the others if I do that.
I still regret some of the things I have said that may have been hurtful to you. I try my best to always stay away from the crowd and have my own opinions, but I wish I did a slightly better job making that clear to you.
One day, our math teacher gave us an activity. Everyone had a piece of paper that needed to be signed by everyone else in the class: each person has to write 1 thing they liked and/or 1 thing they disliked about each person in the class. I remember writing this on yours: “You’re a sweet person who is unfortunately misunderstood by others”
A while after class, you came to my desk and asked me what I meant. I told you how I think you are a good friend, but people tend to think otherwise for reasons beyond my understanding. You seemed pretty happy that I called you my friend, and more importantly, I felt like I had a weight leave my shoulders. Sometimes you have high regards for a person but can never express it.
I am glad I did. A few days later, you let us know that you were leaving school.
I feel 60% less guilty now, simply because I got to tell you my perspective before you left: that people are wrong, not you, and that you need to stop trying to be perfect.
I sincerely hope you are doing well.
Your old friend,
Khyathi