Friendship is a mysterious thing.
It seems to me that friendships are overwhelmingly influenced by timing and compatibility rather than likes and dislikes.
If I trace the history of my friends back to early elementary school, I remember a group of four close friends who were always joking around. At that time, I was understood correctly, and I spent most of my time in a group of guys only, rarely talking to girls.
In the fourth grade, while my friends and I were building a mountain in the sandbox at the park and laughing at the story of a lonely robot climbing the mountain, the girls in my class were holding mirrors in their hands and arguing about whether they were double or single. From that time on, girls were already different creatures.
I met Yabusaka in junior high school.
Yabusaka, who was born into a relatively affluent family and was spoiled without any inconvenience, was the type of person who would express his rude and prejudiced opinions without hesitation. And although he was cheerful and easy to get along with, he would often be disliked after a long time of association because he was rude and annoying.
I met him in the first year of junior high school. But by the end of the second semester, he was so disliked and isolated that I was the only person he talked to.
Why was he talking to me? I guess he was just talking to me because he had no one else to talk to.
The reason I didn’t reject Yabusaka when everyone else was avoiding him and keeping their distance was not that I liked him or felt sorry for him. I just didn’t care for the stress Yabusaka caused others.
My stresses and problems were a bit different from other people’s, and Yabusaka didn’t irritate them at all.
The stress for me was the expectation.
When I saw that people were looking at me like I’m smart, rich, well-bred, or disliked crooked behavior, it bothered me.
I’ve been too self-conscious since I was a child to really know who I was, how I wanted to be seen, or what I wanted to be. If I had to use an analogy, I would say I was like sand in a sandbox or fallen leaves in a park.
One day, they said, “You’re not like the other sand! You are wonderful!” The sand woke up and became self-conscious, even though it was just sand. And it is afraid of being told that it is just sand after all.
When it was not there at all, the self-consciousness that was brought out by others was very strong.
Other people set up an image of me on their own, and when it’s different, they get disappointed.
The sudden disappointment from others stimulated my guilt very much. And there was a different kind of fear that accompanied the guilt.
I studied hard so that people wouldn’t be disappointed, and thanks to that I learned to enjoy studying.
Even though I was evaluated by others, my self-evaluation did not increase. Because I was only acting out what others expected of me, not my true qualities.
I am sand. Just something that’s there.
I’m not really the person people expect me to be.
The people around me imagined a lot of things, but I still had no idea what kind of person I should be or what kind of vision I wanted to have for myself.
I had no desire to be accepted by the people around me. It was just impatience and stress as I struggled to avoid being disappointed by others. When I was recognized, the expectations became greater. It became more and more painful.
Yabusaka thought I was brilliant, and yet when I got a low score on a test, he started with, “Huh? Sakura-kun…” and then laughed saying “eh, you’re so stupid! Noticeably stupid at a glance! stupid, stupid “
To not be expected from the start is not to be disappointed. It was easy to be thought of as sand to sand.
Still, in junior high school, girls didn’t treat me this way either. This was a mysterious culture that was born when I entered a private high school where people of good upbringing gathered there.
In junior high school, it was a little more normal for girls to ask for my contact information. But I didn’t have a cell phone, so there was no way to tell them.
In the first place, there was no girl I liked.
I thought the girls were cute, but they were a stressful mass of expectations for me.
Since it was easy to be thought of as a superior person and to be respected, being friends with people who were decent enough to care about others was harder.
Even in my high school class, I would occasionally be spoken to by decent boys, and I would have conversations with them. Unlike girls, I can talk to them normally. However, the conversation tends to be perfunctory and casual, and no progress is made.
On the other hand, of course, I can’t be friends with people who make fun of me or have hostile intentions. I’d like to be treated appropriately, but that’s not going to happen because I’ve already played the character of the “respectable me” that others expect of me up to that point in my life.
And I was always left with Yabusaka Toru. That was it. As it turned out, we went to the same high school. Yabusaka and I were the only ones from our junior high school.
When Yabusaka was dumped by his girlfriend after a week, she said to him,
“I didn’t think you were that kind of person.”
He replied, “I don’t know what you mean. This is me.”
Again, friendship is not about likes and dislikes, it is about timing and compatibility. There are even careless friendships that you find yourself wasting years of your life on.
That’s really the only reason why I’m friends with Yabusaka, who is stupid, insensitive, and rude to me.
Friendship is a mysterious thing.
It seems to me that friendships are overwhelmingly influenced by timing and compatibility rather than likes and dislikes.
If I trace the history of my friends back to early elementary school, I remember a group of four close friends who were always joking around. At that time, I was understood correctly, and I spent most of my time in a group of guys only, rarely talking to girls.
In the fourth grade, while my friends and I were building a mountain in the sandbox at the park and laughing at the story of a lonely robot climbing the mountain, the girls in my class were holding mirrors in their hands and arguing about whether they were double or single. From that time on, girls were already different creatures.
I met Yabusaka in junior high school.
Yabusaka, who was born into a relatively affluent family and was spoiled without any inconvenience, was the type of person who would express his rude and prejudiced opinions without hesitation. And although he was cheerful and easy to get along with, he would often be disliked after a long time of association because he was rude and annoying.
I met him in the first year of junior high school. But by the end of the second semester, he was so disliked and isolated that I was the only person he talked to.
Why was he talking to me? I guess he was just talking to me because he had no one else to talk to.
The reason I didn’t reject Yabusaka when everyone else was avoiding him and keeping their distance was not that I liked him or felt sorry for him. I just didn’t care for the stress Yabusaka caused others.
My stresses and problems were a bit different from other people’s, and Yabusaka didn’t irritate them at all.
The stress for me was the expectation.
When I saw that people were looking at me like I’m smart, rich, well-bred, or disliked crooked behavior, it bothered me.
I’ve been too self-conscious since I was a child to really know who I was, how I wanted to be seen, or what I wanted to be. If I had to use an analogy, I would say I was like sand in a sandbox or fallen leaves in a park.
One day, they said, “You’re not like the other sand! You are wonderful!” The sand woke up and became self-conscious, even though it was just sand. And it is afraid of being told that it is just sand after all.
When it was not there at all, the self-consciousness that was brought out by others was very strong.
Other people set up an image of me on their own, and when it’s different, they get disappointed.
The sudden disappointment from others stimulated my guilt very much. And there was a different kind of fear that accompanied the guilt.
I studied hard so that people wouldn’t be disappointed, and thanks to that I learned to enjoy studying.
Even though I was evaluated by others, my self-evaluation did not increase. Because I was only acting out what others expected of me, not my true qualities.
I am sand. Just something that’s there.
I’m not really the person people expect me to be.
The people around me imagined a lot of things, but I still had no idea what kind of person I should be or what kind of vision I wanted to have for myself.
I had no desire to be accepted by the people around me. It was just impatience and stress as I struggled to avoid being disappointed by others. When I was recognized, the expectations became greater. It became more and more painful.
Yabusaka thought I was brilliant, and yet when I got a low score on a test, he started with, “Huh? Sakura-kun…” and then laughed saying “eh, you’re so stupid! Noticeably stupid at a glance! stupid, stupid “
To not be expected from the start is not to be disappointed. It was easy to be thought of as sand to sand.
Still, in junior high school, girls didn’t treat me this way either. This was a mysterious culture that was born when I entered a private high school where people of good upbringing gathered there.
In junior high school, it was a little more normal for girls to ask for my contact information. But I didn’t have a cell phone, so there was no way to tell them.
In the first place, there was no girl I liked.
I thought the girls were cute, but they were a stressful mass of expectations for me.
Since it was easy to be thought of as a superior person and to be respected, being friends with people who were decent enough to care about others was harder.
Even in my high school class, I would occasionally be spoken to by decent boys, and I would have conversations with them. Unlike girls, I can talk to them normally. However, the conversation tends to be perfunctory and casual, and no progress is made.
On the other hand, of course, I can’t be friends with people who make fun of me or have hostile intentions. I’d like to be treated appropriately, but that’s not going to happen because I’ve already played the character of the “respectable me” that others expect of me up to that point in my life.
And I was always left with Yabusaka Toru. That was it. As it turned out, we went to the same high school. Yabusaka and I were the only ones from our junior high school.
When Yabusaka was dumped by his girlfriend after a week, she said to him,
“I didn’t think you were that kind of person.”
He replied, “I don’t know what you mean. This is me.”
Again, friendship is not about likes and dislikes, it is about timing and compatibility. There are even careless friendships that you find yourself wasting years of your life on.
That’s really the only reason why I’m friends with Yabusaka, who is stupid, insensitive, and rude to me.
