Birthday Aftermath and the Definition of Friendship

For some reason, I’ve always been of a particular belief that one’s birthday is supposed to be something of a wonderful day. When I say wonderful, I mean in the sense that perhaps there’s a great expectation on the outcome of the day. Something to look forward to, it’s drilled into you as a kid. Your birthday is like Christmas Junior on the calendar, though you’re the only one getting presents. While I don’t judge how good a birthday is by the material aspect, I did feel somewhat disappointed. I didn’t do anything except lay around and watching movies, chatted online for a bit. I wrote a little bit, too. But that was it until dinner.

I had to schedule my own birthday party this year. A dinner at my favorite restaurant, with my mother and some friends. My best friend couldn’t come because he was working, and I was pretty disappointed by that. My own grandmother didn’t even go, all because she doesn’t like Japanese food. I felt hurt by that, not because of my choice in food, but because I thought maybe she’d give in because it was my birthday. I guess love has it’s limits, a lesson I’ve learned time and time again, but I never understood completely. Because of that action, I think it just reset the whole night for me. I mean, she’s pretty important to me, so it said a lot when she decided to stay home and not spend time with me. If my father knew, he would be very pissed off, but I just feel rather hurt by it.

I’m sure you wouldn’t know it to see me over there, I think I held myself admirably, but I just couldn’t get over it. I even extended the night by going to pick up Todd from work and going to go see The Bourne Identity. Good movie, by the way, highly recommended. Right now, I still feel the need to want to go out and have some fun, somewhere. It’s too bad Todd and Jody had to go home, but it is a weeknight and they both have work tomorrow. I guess I’m cursed out of a proper social life with my working weekends and having the week generally free. None of my friends are of such a schedule, and that makes going out a little tougher. I live with my grandmother, who’s pushing 80, and my mother… both of them aren’t exactly what I call active. I guess this is why I try to play DDR everyday, as much as possible. I’m getting out, and I’m exercising. I never come home without feeling as though I just ran a marathon, but it feels good to do that. I get a lot of frustration out of my system by doing that.

Tonight, though, I got a visit from a friend of mine who lives pretty far away up in San Mateo. John was able to make it down and spend time, even though it was for a mere hour, I still felt very happy by his making the trip down through rush hour traffic on 101 and even though he got lost, he still made it. He had 30 minutes notice, but he came. It gave me a little pause to really think about that whole friendship thing. John and I hardly spend time together, not every day or even every month at times, but when we do talk, we just sort of pick up from where we left off, y’know? I don’t think I’ve ever heard him get upset with me once for going a long time between chats. Same with Todd, Jody, Robert, Dave, Mark, Karen, Mike… except one.

Now this isn’t to say that everyone is the same. Others might have a different view of friendship, different definitions of what friends mean to them. This is something I’ve been trying to understand, lately. John’s act made me realize about something. So, I need to take some time and figure out what I’m going to do about that one person. I have the middle of the week free, but she doesn’t. Makes things pretty difficult, especially if I’m going to do what I want to do. But we’ll see. I’m sure this’ll pull it all together. This is going to be the one thing I know that’ll help things between us.

Related posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

%d bloggers like this: