Blind Perspective

The Beginning I don’t know much, but I do know more than I knew yesterday. We all think we’re normal. Or at least we think we know what normal is. But truth be told, normal only relates to our immediate life and who we know. Normal isn’t what we see in magazines, on the TV screen, or pasted all over media and our world as we know it. We think normal is what is closest to us, our friends, family, and who we see at school. All I know is that ten months ago I thought I was normal, and now, let’s just say I’m not so ‘normal’ after all. My life was great. I walked the halls of Billa-Aid High School like I owned the place. I thought I was ‘it and a bit.’ Now, don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t the most popular, but I was happy and comfortable with who I was and lived my life like that every day. After all, this was my last year of high school and I would make the most of it. I took almost everything in my life for granted; I mean, why wouldn’t I? It was all I had ever known. I had a course load that I could dominate so my grades would be excellent for university. I was taking some business, science, math, and history just to keep my options open. My teachers knew who I was because of Carter, my academic genius brother who came before me. Sure they had high expectations for me, but I survived and I held up the family tradition. I wasn’t reaching Carter’s academic genius status but I was sustaining the grades I needed, so I would be able to get into any program I wanted. It was university response time and I started hearing from Western, Laurier, Waterloo, Guelph, Simon Fraser, University of British Columbia, Brock, and every other school I thought to apply to. That’s right, I was a completely clueless adolescent when it came to my future plans. I just wanted to live my life and see how it would end up … all this planning threw me off. I didn’t want to be stuck in one repetitive occupation for the rest of my life. The problem with me wasn’t that I wasn’t motivated enough; it was that I couldn’t narrow down my options. I wanted every future out there. Paramedic sounded fun, but so did teacher, doctor, businesswoman, marine biologist, actress, science research assistant, sports announcer, and every other job. They all appealed to me! I wanted to do it all and be it all. That’s kind of the same way I treated my friends and family. My friend Anabeth once referred to me as a ‘friend whore.’ Okay, I know a whore is a bad thing and not something you want to be known as, but what in the world is a friend whore? So I asked her to break it down for me. She said that having so many friends at one time made me a ‘friend whore.’ I could only stare at her in puzzlement. ‘You have friends everywhere you go and you are just so nice to everybody that even people who don’t know you and only see your actions want to be your friend and invite you to things, making you a friend whore. You steal all the friends out there for us lonely people.’ Anabeth finished her spiel, ‘It’s a good thing, and it’s just amazing to watch how people are all drawn to you. I like sticking with one or two friends I can really trust. You cannot possibly feel close to all of the different people who call you their friend. It seems like a lot of shallow surface relationships.’ Wow. I didn’t really know how to respond to this, but then I thought about my life and I realized I did have a lot of friends. I mean, if I were to have my wedding I would have no idea who my bridesmaids would be, let alone who would be invited. I seemed to share little bits of myself with lots of different groups, but never trusted my whole self with just one person. Good thing I wanted my wedding at Leeds Castle; I’m sure that could fit quite a few of us! Leeds Castle was a gorgeous castle I had seen when I was younger and I couldn’t seem to shake that beautiful image out of my head for my wedding. The castle was in England, which would pose some difficulties later since I lived in Canada. When you’re a child and everything you could ever imagine feels like it could come true, Leeds Castle was the perfect place for my wedding. I sometimes still think like a naive child who believes that everything will always work out and nothing bad can ever happen. I like to hold on to the innocence of a child and push the thoughts that couldn’t be perfect out of my head. In my mind I was still a child, playing princess in a world where everything worked out happily ever after. I got to thinking about what Anabeth said, and I realized I wasn’t a friend whore because I had multiple shallow relationships. I was a friend whore because I cared about everybody’s story and genuinely listened to every single person no matter who they were. Plus the fact that I was busy 24/7 and joined every club and every team helped me meet people pretty fast. It just made it hard to stay in deep relationships and continue to be ‘best’ friends with all of them. I did have my close friends that I would tell most everything to and have fun just sitting around doing nothing with. I think that when you call up a friend to do nothing, that is when you are truly friends on a new level—that and being able to fart in front of a friend or not be ridiculously polite, just being comfortable with yourself. Friends that you truly believe would be there for you no matter if you didn’t shower that day are friends that mean so much more than words can explain. Those friends are very rare and should be cherished.