Stepping Through The Shadow, Part 2/2: The Friend Aspect

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be para­noid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

—Tool, Forty Six & 2

Unfortunately, I’m not myself when I’m around my friends.

With them, I’m hap­pi­er, more con­fi­dent, extro­vert­ed. It’s usu­al­ly only with them that I can test the bound­aries of social con­duct, because I know that they under­stand me, accept me, and are will­ing to back me all the way. Sometimes, I end up say­ing some pret­ty embar­rass­ing things off-the-cuff, things made more embar­rass­ing by the fact that even my friends aren’t laugh­ing. But to find the bound­ary, one has to cross it at some point. And it’s such a fuck­ing pow­er trip to know that I’m test­ing myself as well, test­ing how far I’m will­ing to go, some­thing that I can only do with the right peo­ple.

Without my friends, I recede into my shell. I require them at par­ties, events, social func­tions just so I can inter­act with peo­ple nor­mal­ly. When I do find myself in absence of their pres­ence, I force myself to be social. I con­sid­er how I would behave if I was with them, and pro­ceed with cau­tion. It’s slow­ly get­ting eas­i­er for me when I’m by myself. Perhaps I’m gain­ing my own self-con­fi­dence when I’m not around them.

Something I that can only gain when I’m with them.

The Stepping Through The Shadow Series

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