It’s always fun to joke around with Aaron about how high main­te­nance he is. “Negative main­te­nance”, we call it, since it’s all in rela­tion to the girl. I don’t think that I ever stay as one type of main­te­nance; it usu­ally depends on the rela­tion­ship and girl for me.

Nick told me yes­ter­day that I was the most inde­pen­dent per­son he knows. Being the most any­thing to some­one is always inter­est­ing. “Independent?”, I asked. After liv­ing with me for a few months, he hasn’t known any­one else who can stay in their room for days on end, he explained. “More like no life”, I thought.

Ever since I was a kid, I haven’t had many friends. For about two years in grade three to grade four, I hung around Andrew and Alex mostly, but this ended when they switched schools. Until grade eight, I had no one to talk to or do things with. I was the friendly loner in school, the per­son no one dis­liked who was never invited to any­thing. In grade eight I became fast friends with Greg, until I swapped schools with him, and he found a more pop­u­lar group. Then once again, I ate lunches by myself. For two entire sum­mers, and — I do not embell­ish this one bit — I stayed in my house and played soli­taire for four months, unless vis­it­ing relatives.

In grade eleven I became friends with John (even though I’ve known him since grade five) but John was even more of a loner than me. We would do some crazy shit dur­ing our lunches, and ended up piss­ing off more than one teacher. Ever since then, I’ve had an anchor, some­one I could turn to and talk to, although mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent city has hin­dered the amount of time we could spend together.

In the first and sec­ond year of uni­ver­sity I wouldn’t leave my room. People called it “the dun­geon”, and asked me what I was doing out­side when­ever I was wait­ing for an ele­va­tor. I didn’t get along too well with the peo­ple on my floor (intol­er­ance, yet again) and the friends I made in class weren’t anti-social, but weren’t social as well. I would get to my room on Fridays, and gen­er­ally not leave until I had to go back to class on Monday.

It’s only been in third year, after meet­ing Aaron and Trolley, that I feel like I’ve come into a com­fort­able group. I’ve been for­tu­nate to have picked up some good friends along the way, such as Eugene, Dina, and Pat, but our rela­tion­ships are more lim­ited, due to a lack of time spent together. I mean, Aaron and Trolley are the ones I can get drunk with, stoned with, who take care of me, who I exchange secrets with, who I feel most com­fort­able with. (Oddly enough, my ulti­mate test for this is how loud I can sing in front of them, but that’s another story altogether)

However, most peo­ple are busy with school now, and I’m left in my room most of the time. I actu­ally do stay in the apart­ment quite a bit, and yet it doesn’t feel strange to me. I’ve been trained my whole life to be a loner, as some­one with no life. Perhaps this can be seen as some sort of inde­pen­dence, but in real­ity I’m depen­dent on my friends. I’m just wait­ing until every­one is done school and has enough free time to do things. I can’t wait until that happens.

And if I end up no friends? I think I’d be sad.

But I’d be used to it.