Friends, part 2: The Personal Side

Hello friends,

I value you guys. I really do. When I was depressed coming back from vacation I needed validation. Validation as a person, of my values and my interests. What moves me and shakes me. It is a selfish boost of ego, I know, but it was needed. Later in the week after having some talks with Nancy as to why I felt like I just stepped out of Bizarro world, the problem crystallized itself. I needed friends. It's not enough that I'm able to entertain myself in this world. I need someone to share the experience with. And as it is, having a wife and son is not going to fill that role necessarily.

Don't get me wrong, I love Nancy and Alex, but they are their own persons, with their own interests and own problems and they don't necessarily match mine. This is not at all a bad thing, but I need that realization in order to know how to tackle this problem of self-imposed isolation. I need to be able to respect the fact that they have their own take on the world and that (for anyone really) it takes most of your energy and time to try and make sense of that subjective experience. Isn't that what I'm struggling with in the end? Note to self: I need to spend time relating to their problems and listen to them as much as I want someone to listen to me. It goes both ways.

Everyone needs a good friend. Roger used to be mine. We did everything together, from drinking coffee and watching people come by (okay, okay, the opposite sex) on Saturday morning at our local hangout. We went to see movies over the border in Belgium. We hang out together and read comic books and watched Gilmore Girls (how's that for a metro-sexual-in-touch-with-your-feminine-side-bromance relationship before it became popular in the latest Hollywood movies?) I sort of lost touch with him after we both got married and I moved away from Europe, a testimony that long-distance relationships are hard to nurture, no matter how much we stay in touch on Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. I still have some contact with equally good friends Tim and Hans Jurgen, both of which are from a time when I went to university, but still it's a fragile set of contacts.

I need someone locally. Someone I can just hang out with, have a drink and talk. But I need to be able to talk  about more than how cool the latest blockbuster was or the mechanics of young adult novels. At the end of the day I, like most others no doubt, have thoughts and opinions that need processing. Writing books, blogs and journals is good therapy and will do in a pinch, but to be human is to be among humans. I need social contact of the 'look me in the eye' and 'slap me on the back' variety. And with someone who like me is not afraid of wearing their heart on their sleeve and being open. Because in the end I am not a 'man's man', but an honest soul bearing, not afraid to land on my face, fun-loving, sensitive and introspective type of man.

No doubt, this is how I'll write Simon. Not as who I am now, but more or less how I became me, along the path of emotional and intellectual struggles, embarrassing self-realization and processing of fear by making them my own. More about that tomorrow....