The Wolf Bares Its Fangs

I felt I didn't need friends, but my parents said I needed to have one. My parents, especially my Dad was the champion and advocate of finding friends, saying that he got where he was because he maintained good relationships with his friends from school and everywhere else.

Coming from someone who had a strained relationship with his own son, that sounded like a hoax to me

But it wasn't really advice, so to say. You see, when my Dad gave advice, it was more like a decree or a command. So when my Dad said "I think it would do you a lot of good to make friends", what he really meant was "Thou art commanded to get thee new friends and showest them to me, or thou shalt face the consequences".

I was basically standing in between the devil and the deep blue sea. Here's my own father asking me to get new friends or face some unknown but definitely terrible punishment on one hand, and on the other, I had to face the prospects of a relationship with another human being when I was totally averse to being attached to other people.

I chose the latter, because I only had to find Tom, Dick and Harry, bring them to my house, be seen with them once every day and talk about them randomly at home. But making that choice was the easy part. I'd been known to be silent, reclusive and hardly approachable by others. It was going to be weird if I just met someone and said "Hi, I'd like to be your friend". So I joined the Art club, since it was one of the few things I was good at.

Within a few weeks, my father's advice was beginning to get to me. Although I made the decision to finally find friends, I was able to develop a genuine... connection (it still couldn't be called a proper friendship at that point) with other artists in the club, including a girl in my class called Rose.

I knew she was in my class, and a popular one at that, but that was the extent of the 'knowledge'. I had no idea of her surname, just her name, class and clique. Unlike most people who tend to hate the popular kids, I had no opinion whatsoever of Rose, because I really didn't judge a book by is cover. And because I did not have any intentions of reading the book anyway, I just saw everyone else as people, and occasionally as potential tools to fulfill a goal.

But, as I was to find out, I wasn't the only person with such an outlook of life. Except unlike me, a full-blown lone wolf with no disguises or facades, this wolf had ordered a sheep costume from Amazon.

So Rose and I got talking. From talking, to getting introduced to each others friends, (More like me getting introduced to her friends and her getting introduced to my lonely life). My parents eventually got to know her, although my father was shocked. He had this "I asked for a friend, not a girlfriend" look on his face.

What does it take to please you???

And he was wrong anyway. I didn't even want to be friends in the real sense of the word, and here he was talking about a date. That was mathematically, scientifically, Dream-ifically and Disney-fically impossible.

But hey, what else comes out of the meeting between Life and Fate, except a ploy to spoil your plans and, in some cases, try to ruin your life?

We really got to know each other, or at least Rose got to know me. She was really curious about my views of life and my mentality; and she was persistent, keenly trying to change me.

Great, here comes another grossly unqualified therapist unwittingly trying to get under my skin.

But, I have to give her credit for efforts, and smarts. Although like other therapists, her 'diagnoses' and 'hypotheses' about my case appeared to be wrong, she was secretly understanding every bit of me. And when she finally made her move, she was good.

She told me she'd been in my shoes, and with the help of 'friends', shed found the light. I definitely did not need to see the light at that moment, but since she'd come this far, I thought I should have taken her a bit farther before showing her I was a lost cause through and through.

Slowly she started to tell me about how her lack of friends drove her down a path where she needed people and no on was there for her, and then she started having suicidal thoughts. I think that was my Achilles' Heel.

I was and still am completely terrified of death.

I didn't have what many would call a great life, but I was still far from reaching my zenith. I still needed to see whether I'd be a sad specter for the rest of my life, or some backseat therapist would finally win the Nobel Peace Prize for cracking my case. So I was ready to go down with everything Rose said.

I opened up to her. Completely. Rose got to know about my life, insecurities and basically, my mentality. And for one day in my life, I felt free.

The next day, the news was everywhere in my school that I was a mad psychopath who had been to several psychiatrists (not therapists) without remedy, and that I hated people. And you can guess who was responsible for that Breaking News. If I had no chance of making friends before, I now had less than none.

That experience changed me, because I started being severely judgmental about people, even going as far as hating hem. I slipped into an antisocial state worse than any I had ever been in. But I learned one thing: Prevention is better than cure.

The Wolf in sheep's clothing is never discovered until it bares its fangs.

The Burial

A Call and an Answer

Therapy Sessions

The Outsider

Taken

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Although I'm thankfully out of that stage, I'm very wary about making friends.

#darkdays #changed #becarefulwhoyourfriendsare.