Adventures in Solitude and Reasons We Can’t Be Friends

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Madison Aument

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Not playing well with others is often a sign of a sociopath. I’m not a sociopath; I’m neurotic, but not a full-fledged lunatic. You have enough bad experiences with people, though and it’ll turn you into a loner.

Of course being new to the area and the school, you’d think, “she’d want to make friends.” That’s a normal human reaction to being a new place.” Well, like most people, you’re wrong.

My weariness of people had been a slow-burning flame that eventually blew up and consumed me. I put myself out there. I decided to make a new friend in the resident weirdo-pretentious theater girl. We’ll call her Amelia. She’s the lead role in the shakespearean tragedy of my social life. She was smart and I appreciated that. It soon became condescending and it drained the life out of me. But I wasn’t going to give up yet. No, the beginning of the end of that friendship, was arguably too shallow a reason to even admit, but for the sake of the story, I will.

Her name is Amelia. She was a theater dweeb. Not all people who are into theater are dweebs. She was a dweeb who enjoyed the theater. She’s also not dead. The past tense is due to the fact that who cares about her anymore.Every conversation turned into me being screamed a Shakespearean-esque soliloquy.

Amelia says, “Shall we go yonder to the bathroom before the bell rings?”

I say yes. We go to the restroom. I ponder why she must talk as though she has a thesaurus shoved up her rectum. The girls’ room is barren except for a pile of sopping paper towels sitting in the sink. I stand at the sink and fiddle with my hair and earrings, purse my lips, rub my temples.

Then began the grunting- the guttural moans of strain. Great, she invited me to the restroom to take a dump. There are two scenarios in which I would have been able to accept this. Scenario 1. She was deathly ill; it was defecate or die. Scenario 2. She finished off a 32 ounce coffee and it finally hit her bowels.

Neither of these scenarios proved to be the case. This was not emergency defecation. This was not relaxed. Her intestines were hardened into cement. She was trying to push hardened gravel out of her intestines. I’m leaning against the wall of the bathroom begging the sun gods for the sweet release of death.

The sounds echoing in the empty room oscillate between drops in the water and heaving breathes. Each disturbance in the silence rattle my spine like the sound of gunshots. Finally, a flush. She washes her hands and starts in on a diatribe about how Frozen is a good movie with plot points. Her ability to act as nothing happened disturbed me further.

That’s what happened when I went out on a limb to be friends with someone who seemed smart and nice albeit quirky. Today, I say quirky, for Amelia, is an understatement.

So no, I don’t want to be your friend guy in my political science class who only wears Adidas soccer sweats and talks about how much he lifts nor do I want to be friends with the guy who braids his thinning hair into a man-bun.

Girl in French class who begged to be called an arbitrary nickname reminiscent of an exotic dancer, I do not wish to befriend you. And man in my economics class, I saw you eating your eraser. One quick question for you, how did it taste? Good? Now please never speak to me.

And hey, guy at the fair who shook my hand and kept locking eyes with me, ten seconds is far too long for a handshake? You should’ve let go sooner and not make so much eye contact and why did you have to introduce yourself? I don’t care what your name is. I just wanted you to walk away. I don’t want to be friends with any of you.