Too Busy Being a Bad Friend
I had a buddy once called Samuel. Since we never fell out, I suppose technically we’re still friends but it doesn’t feel like it; I’ve not contacted him in years. From what I remember, he was not always happy. We first met at a summer camp when I was a sophomore in high school. Though I did not realize it back then, he was actually 3 or 4 years younger than I. How or why we became friends, I don’t remember. But I can’t imagine that we connected on a deep level. It’s not because we didn’t share similarities, but because I wasn’t emotionally capable of having those kinds of relationships then.
He was quirky, definitely one of those kids who stood out. He was weird, immature and deathly afraid of girls, all of which were hallmarks of a 7th grader. But he wasn’t a bad kid, that’s probably why I became friends with him. I have always gravitated towards people who are simply good-natured. Before long, summer came to an end and so did our time together. He was headed back to Dubai for a break, before attending another camp. We exchanged emails and added each other on Facebook, of course, but it took a while before we actually began talking again.
The year after we met, we would intermittently send messages through Google chat, catching each other up on our lives. Most days, we’d leave each other emails for the other to respond to when we caught up across the time zones. Some days though, we would be able to have conversation in real time. It was in these times that I learned most about him. I became someone who he could talk to, the confidante across the world. Soon I would discover his family background, his childhood, and his reasons behind why he was a self-proclaimed, “depressed misanthrope.”
At the time, it just seemed like something that every high schooler goes through — the period of feeling lonely and lost, being misunderstood and thinking they don’t belong.
Sometimes we would chit chat and share things we enjoyed. I was into Doctor Who at the time and whenever I’d tell him about the show, he would respond “fantastic baby,” alluding to one of his favorite K-pop songs. “It’s so good! Really! First music. With American chord progressions. With terrible lyrics. With half-techno sounds. And dancing. It’s a package for success,” he said.
In a way, he was a package for success himself. Since the day he was born, his parents had a life full of extracurriculars and summers planned out for him. I learned that like his brother, he was to learn about trading and stocks. Like his brother, he was to become the school’s valedictorian. Like his brother, he was expected to go to the same Ivy League. For most people, life is a journey to be explored, but his was already mapped, only to be followed. His life was packed for him, filled with hobbies, expectations and a label: From Qatar, To Princeton.
“You should work on your Google page. Max Jason Mai is beating you. If I Google you I should see how amazing you are. That’s what colleges do.”
At the time, I didn’t register how matter-of-fact he was. Now, I realize how preposterous it was for a 7th grader to be giving college advice to a high school sophomore. But that was what he was packaged for, what he lived for. His parents had a destination in mind for him and he followed, out of the fear of disappointing, but also out of love for his parents. From East to West, from one camp to the next, all so that in the future he might land somewhere prestigious.
One of the crazier stories I remember was one about his mom. He had forgotten to log off his Facebook, so when his mom went to look at hers, she found his instead. Since I had a camera that summer, there were a lot of photos of our friends working in class, doing homework late into the night, eating out and having fun. On one of the weekends, we went to the boardwalk. Our counselors said we would leave around 5 pm, but the sun was already high past noon. Shadows grew longer and longer and I was already losing light. With as many photos as my memory card could hold, I began capturing everything. The laughs we shared as we waited in line for amusement rides, the prancing we joined in as we ran along the waves and the half-hearted teasing of summer romance we encouraged between our friends. All filling an entire album with photos of us from that day.
There wasn’t anything on his Facebook wall besides photos of his friends from summer camp, just innocent memorabilia of the good times we had. When I looked at those photos, I was reminded of happiness, liberty and the spirit of teenage summers. What his mother saw instead was weakness — the ability to have emotion — a distraction from the more important aspirations in life. He sighed,
“I know huh, terrible. How can I have emotion? I’m 14.”
And so she deactivated his account and to this day, it remains unused, void of any signs of personality or life.
In another story, he tried to make a shrine of someone in his locker. There was a girl, an upperclassmen in 11th grade, who was in his math class. She played the flute, so they both shared an interest in music. However, she had been failing her math quizzes, which had bothered him. When I told him that was the perfect opportunity to get to know her through helping her, he retorted, “I don’t like her writing. Her penmanship. Like it matters that much, but still. Those math quizzes are messy.” Nevertheless, he found her really cute and wanted to make a shrine for her, but it had never come into fruition. His classmates had seen and had taken away some of his photos. Besides, he just didn’t know how.
Like his emotional maturity, the shrine was undeveloped. It was unformed without structure, “just a stack of pages of pictures that haven’t been stuck up.” He had always feared relationships, which I think stemmed from the years of emotional suppression, from all of the times that his mother punished him for having feelings. Like he said, how can a 14 year old have emotions? But then, how can the same 14 year old relate to others? Perhaps that’s why he later craved and longed for intimacy with others, something that was denied to him by his mother. His intentions manifested in misguided acts of love that would be misunderstood. I’d hear stories like this, of heartbreak and sadness, and they were usually stories of unreciprocated, 1-way relationships that didn’t turn out so well.
It’s sad, but I think all he really wanted was the acceptance of and the approval from his mother. As I look back now in nostalgia and horror, I can’t believe the life that he has had; what I had thought were typical high school problems appear to be something more. He had a tiger mom, who rarely showed her affection. He lived in the shadow of his brother, whom he admired. He internalized expectations that he was to succeed, no matter what, at a young age.
At the time, I mistook his self-deprecating statements as humble brags. Looking at them now, they seem like they weren’t meant to show off, but to downplay the reality of great expectations that he was to live up to. In a way, it was a coping mechanism — to be melodramatic means to unmask the worst of the worst, that way you’ll never be disappointed by surprise.
All of this is what I remember of him, which I have pieced together from personal observations and the faint memories of us together. But as I reread our conversations, I realize I had forgotten how much there was to him beyond the person his parents wanted him to be. He read British fiction, loved Phineas and Ferb and composed a lot of music. He played the oboe, I think, among other instruments. He always kept a list of potential stage names on his phone, in case anyone would ever ask. There were badass names like Overdrive, Inkspill, Ananux, Tarxuna and Intake. My favorite was Drazzam, something he came up with by inverting the word ‘mazzard’ (a type of berry, apparently) and it incidentally sounded like the mash up of Doctor and Shazam.
In rereading our conversations, I’m also reminded that they’re just that. They’re a bunch of letters stringed together to form words and into sentences, which were once said by a voice that I’m no longer familiar with. Like everything else I think I know about him, they’re from a distant past, one that doesn’t belong to me. I’ll never know what really happened to him; all I know for sure is that I wasn’t there for him as much as I would have liked.
Because ultimately, I was a bad friend. Despite all of the signs and even the messages that read “I’m depressed,” I now realize that I never properly gave him the attention that I should have. I was too absorbed by my own selfishness and ignorance to listen to him. Every time he tried to open up, I was always too busy studying for AP Bio or taking notes for APUSH. It takes a lot to open up to someone, I would know. And to think that he felt he could share his feelings and be vulnerable with me, only to be neglected? I am ashamed. I had the chance to be supportive, to tell him that I care for him, to help him feel less lonely. But I didn’t. And regardless of the severity of his depression and despite how he turned out now, at that moment in time, I failed him and now I can only ask for forgiveness.
Sure, a lot of people can relate to demanding parents, unexpressed expectations and unrequited crushes. But the truth is that we all experienced high school differently. Everyone comes from different walks of life with different circumstances, different personal histories. We can only hope to be given the opportunity to learn about each other, to hear each other’s stories, and to be there for one another. All of this is really a reminder to be there for the people you care about in your life, no matter how busy you are.
It has been 3 years since I last spoke with him. He could’ve exceeded his mother’s expectation for success or even found his own independence, for all I know. He should be 18 this year, about to enter his first year of college. He had always struggled with his sense of identity, so I wish him the best. 18 was one of the most transformative years of my life and I hope he finds it the same.
It was the year I took my first step in defining my own life, in writing my own future. So, wherever you are Samuel, wherever you have landed, — if you haven’t already, I hope that you can take your first step towards your own path.
