Comic 676 – “The Shunned”
Errol: I’m not going to pretend I feel left out or shunned. I think I’m at the age where I honestly don’t care, and I’ll just plop myself into any situation whether I’m wanted or not because it seems like it’s going to be a good time. (Check our D&E page to see me participate in an Andrew Huang video. Boy, was I out of place there!)
That doesn’t mean, however, I was always like that. And that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes worry about my daughters. I know there is one group that’s rather cliquey and my eldest feels all uncomfortable around them. It’s not the groups fault, they’re just close. And Ekko has many other friends she always hangs out with.
But I know she’s a crazy kid, with crazy interests, and some of that is my fault. 🙂 I’m fiercely proud of her, but I don’t like to think she’s left out, or lonely, or looked down on.
And there’s nothing I can do. So I hope she is secure, and knows we love her, and she can deal with life as it comes at her.
And sometimes I look at her, and think she’s ok and will do just fine. ^_^
Whitless: To be fair, this wasn’t quite the conversation :D. I never said “you wouldn’t understand”. I never assume that about people 😀 ESPECIALLY when it comes to feeling left out. Everyone feels left out at some point in their life. And it’s tough. But I have my buds, and that makes me happy :D.
So somebody else has now seen despicable me 2.
Just saw it last night! ^_^
Oh, I absolutely understand about the “feeling left out” thing. I sometimes feel as if that’s my natural state. Stupid natural state.
You’re always part of my group, Kari! ^_^
I think things like being isolated and such are always more prominent when you’re children. Not to say adults can’t feel alone but I think it’s something more acknowledged with kids and young adults. Most of the time they want to be friends with everyone and not be left out for whatever reason children come up with. Sadly at that age I was a sheep happily going along with whatever the popular kids deemed right. I’m can’t really remember if I liked many geeky things but if I did that was one of the things I kept hidden. High school was a traumatizing hell that had me experience a lot of what I tried to avoid at elementary level. My group was fickle and I often found myself the one who was ousted and alone for periods of time. While I hated it at the time it led to the eye-opening experience of college. That was when I finally got an identity that was my own and didn’t care anymore if people thought it was strange (though I will admit that I still don’t share everything with people. That’s a habit hard to break). It helped that I had (and made) a few friends who didn’t care if my tastes didn’t run exactly as their own. I would say now I have a new found love for being alone though since (aside from a few friends) I prefer to be by myself than with other people. Good thing too since I’m kinda isolated now from everyone I know and only see friends in person rarely now. Of course the internet adds another dynamic of socializing with out being with anyone that I thinks skews the whole alone perception. 🙂
Bah that was long and depressing. Oh btw.. Happy 4th to those in America! XD
I think it’s the responsibility of the extrovert to include everyone. 😀 But… it gets hard… because there are so many people and sometimes I don’t have time.
And I still operate under the, “Maybe they don’t want me to bother them because I AM loud and annoying”… so I usually default to “Please talk to me first”.
Geeze, this really is the week of emotions, blerg. I won’t go long into this, because I could, and nobody wants that, Jez knows most of it already anyhow. But from Elementary to just before High School, I was the one that was the target for the vast majority of teasing and mocking in my grade (and sometimes in others) The other kids who got bullied could earn a day pass to the cool group by bullying me. And all the way up until the end of JHS, like an idiot, I tried desperately to fit in. At that point, my best friend was Jez, whom I saw maybe once a year, and only got to speak to on the phone. There were some people I thought of as friends, but… over all, it was a very bad time for me. But High School was….. amazing. I made some fantastic friends early on, and even though one of the guys who picked on me most in JHS came over to my High School when I did, and even joined the same after school activity as I did, my friends made it clear that if anyone picked on me… they’d have to go through them. So until senior year of HS, I felt included and wanted by a group that wasn’t family for the first time in perhaps forever. It was…. wonderful. But… as often happens, I clicked better with people older than myself, and they all graduated and/or moved away by my senior year, except for one girl whom I was growing apart from as her interest moved to what she could get away with with her boyfriend. So I found a group of freshmen, and started hanging with them. I made some mistakes there, in my desperation to fit in, including letting myself be pushed into writing a REALLY bad Mary Sue Cross-fic that will haunt me the rest of my life with the hideousness. But…. near the end of the year, I did get a clearer picture of who my friends were in that group and who… I was better off without (and they were better off without me).
Unfortunately, I’ve lost contact with the vast majority of my High School friends. I tired so hard for so long to cling to them, to cling to High School… but ultimately for naught. I spend a lot of time feeling left out, and alone. But when that happens, I try to remind myself that I have two best friends who are the most amazing people, and most amazing friends I could ever hope to know. Friends who even if I cannot see them face to face know that they are always in my heart and in my thoughts, friends who I can talk to on the phone, who if I really really needed me, would drop everything for me. And who are friends with each other. So really, I’d be selfish and petty to want more than that. And when I start feeling like I want more, or feeling left out (see the Disney Internship Adventure) I call one of them, or poke one of them online, and try to remind myself that I am loved, and that the quality of friendship is measured in the strength of the bond, not the number of bonds, and that true friends… true friends are forever.
Now to figure out how to get the other one onto this site, once the sappiness is done. Jez, think you could role reverse the “please” “no” thing? ::grinning through tears::
I told you I cry easily. And that was the short, simplified version.
Ah.. the ‘please’ ‘no’ thing didn’t really work in my case and I doubt you want ‘no’ to be the answer but I guess I could try at Otakon. XD
For something more lighthearted now I shall share a conversation I just had with my mother about FB:
Mom: Does the stuff I put on fb and the comments go away?
Me: No… it’s still there.
Mom: Oh…
Me: Why?
Mom: Doesn’t it fill up at some point?
Me: …………
Me: No mom. It’s the internet. It doesn’t fill up like your email box.
Mom: Oh! So it always floats out there somewhere.
Me: …. Yeah..
::grins::