Control: Losing Friends

I, Dalton Lewis, am an unpopular person because of my own actions. Sitting in my room playing video games and writing and reading embodies my life. I drink zero sugar soda and flavored water and eat cereal, bagels, peanut butter toast, and frozen dinners. Why? Why don’t friends hang out with me every night?

First of all there’s a super psycho death virus. That limits my ability to hang out with people and have things happen. It goes deeper than that. I have talked to countless people in my life. Here’s the thing — friends have lost touch with me, a lot of friends, a lot of people. They are somewhere, doing something, living their lives, without me knowing where they are or what they are doing.

I hung out with a bunch of wonderful young women when I lived in Japan for nine months. I didn’t talk to them ever again after that — with the exception of one of them who took classes with me the following year. After that I never talked to them again. One of them had a husband or boyfriend in the military. One spoke fluent Spanish. The third one had cheated on her boyfriend with a hot Japanese guy. I say that without any judgment at all. I have no idea how they are doing.

Summers from college — or maybe high school. I went over to a guy’s small apartment and played Magic the Gathering most nights. We would play the game all night long, and I sometimes won and sometimes lost. After that summer I never talked to them ever again. I don’t know why — and one of them was fat, and I thought, I’m glad I’m not like that. Now I am fat and don’t know what to do about it.

In my twenties — I went back home after getting sick. I went to Wisconsin to role-play with some people once a week for a year or two. We role-played and had fun, and they tolerated my mental illness. After a while I admitted to knowing Sal and they kicked me out of the group for daring to be friends with such a horrible person as Sal. I defended Sal — he was my friend when I didn’t have any friends. Losing friends because of Sal — that’s life.

Middle school — I had three friends. One was overweight and lived in a nice big home — a mansion really. Another loved loud, offensive music and got tired of my role-playing. The third was excitable, loved to run around, and was more popular than me. I moved to Illinois and didn’t talk to them again for twenty years.

The kicker — my college friends. I thought that we would be friends forever. I finally met my friends for life! We would play video games all night long, putting cords between our computers in order to play multiplayer games at the dorm. Stanley Hall was the dorm, and Stanley Seven was the floor. We talked, we occasionally role-played, and we watched movies like crazy. Reading comic books meant something to us. We watched Deep Space Nine and a bunch of other geek chic television shows from that era, but mostly we watched movies, renting them from the video store. We went to the music store and bought CD’s. We listened to musicians performing every once in a while. We went to the bars and drank liquor once every week or two. We studied a little, maybe not as much as we should have. I didn’t think that I would go more than a few days without talking to them. I lost touch with them soon after college ended. I didn’t see most of them ever again.

Why? Why lose so many friends over the years? I don’t understand. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Clearly I got something wrong, not keeping up with those people, always having a small group of people in my life. I don’t want that to happen any more. I want to be back with my friends. I don’t want to lose anyone else. I have nothing else to say. There’s no reason, no lesson, no answer. It just happened.

Thanks, and take care, friends.