The User

I've been thinking about the notion of 'users', as in people who use others constantly for their own benefit often without even realising it, and how much a world's ethics based on greed and self-interest has been driving that trend.

It would be foolish to think that the way our world's ethics have developed isn't directly having an impact on the very way people turn out to be in life. More and more, life as a whole has become a race for consumption. A belief that each of us has a 'right' for almost everything has nurtured a society based on self-entitlement and expectations that ought to match our own, irrespective of the fact that our expectations may be wrong, deluded or contrary to the well-being of others.

We want what we want, and give no regard to anything else. We have a 'right' to want, and that's it. Everyone is out for themselves in a society that no longer exists in essence, but whose foundations are still there to give the illusion that it's still a society we live in.

Love has become this strange commodity that one can get and throw away at the slightest inconvenience. The notion that love is something deeply linked to responsibility and commitment has pretty much gone out of the window for a lot of people out there. People just want the easy part where it's all cuddly and nice, and as soon as the going gets tough, they can just throw it all away and move on.

It's particularly disturbing to me, I have to say. It's not even like I have a particularly strong sense of 'ethics' in life. I'm rather flexible, and tend to follow or dream about things that would make more sense than not. Things that would more likely bring a healthy balance than not.

Yesterday, I went to meet a friend of mine, thinking it was good timing that she'd called me to go to the movies with her since I had nothing planned and was feeling a bit down. I decided at once to go out and spend the afternoon with her and catch up on things. Just have a girls day out, you know, between old friends...

We met near the cinema where we used to work together, and went to have a burger and chips first. As we sat at a table in a corner, she started telling me how she was no longer talking to her other friends because they were so 'selfish' and always 'wanting things to be their way' without any regard as to whether it was good for her as well or not. I was listening, nodding my head as she said all this, and then she said something like: "Yeah, so I told them I wouldn't go out with them anymore. I said I didn't want to go to the movies with them this weekend anymore, and when they laughed and said I'd have to go on my own, I just told them I'd call you, so... in their face, right?"

I was struck for a second by the blatant fact that she'd just told me in my face that the only reason she'd called me was because she needed someone to go with her. She'd used me and told me in my face, and couldn't even see that she did, and yet there she was complaining about her friends doing that to her.

Talk about making you feel like the third wheel, here. But that's obviously the role I play with most people I know. Thinking back, they never call or text, or really want to be in my company unless there's a specific purpose that forces them to see me.

A few months ago, another of my 'friends' called me out of the blue. Her polite excuse was that she wanted to catch up, and then before I hung up the phone, she asked if I could lend her that pretty top I had because she was going salsa dancing. I said, sure, I'll bring it with me when we meet up, which I did.

Then I didn't hear from her for another 4 months or so... till she texts me again out of the blue and offers to go out for a drink and 'catch up'. I'm like, yeah, of course, that would be nice. So I go there to meet her, and we do have a nice time catching up, but the real reason for meeting up in the first place stares me in the face the whole evening: she needed to return the top.

This sort of situation where I'm reminded I'm always the third wheel or Billie no mates isn't new to me. It's the story of my life since high school, really. I've spent a good part of my last decade wondering what it is I do that alienates people so much from me, and I'm sure there are things I do or don't do that put me in that position. My lack of active social interaction doesn't help, in the sense that I don't actively seek to be in contact with anyone most of the time. But the reason I don't is because I just don't feel drawn to most people... they bore me, perhaps just as much as I bore them. There's this inherent incompatibility with the people I end up meeting, which is really at the core of why I can never fit in with them.

For a long time I used to think that perhaps I was just plain weird - but even the worst of weirdos make friends. Doesn't society love a so-called weirdo? Maybe I'm a mean person, but then again, don't people always feel more attracted to the bitch and the jerk of the village? Yes, they do. So... I ended up thinking that I was probably too boring, and it fitted with the fact that I just don't find what most people talk about 24/7 interesting that much. It's interesting, even fun at times, to gossip and make stupid jokes for a third of a conversation, but after that it just gets way too boring for words, I'm sorry.

So I've developed that inability to fit in with a lot of people because I don't really get what they talk about. I don't watch much TV, don't read the latest trends, don't follow sports, don't enjoy shopping, etc... so when people start mingling with each other and 'bond' I can never contribute, not only because I'm not interested, but because I really can't, since I don't follow what most of them do.

However, I recently started to make some effort just to have the basis of a mainstream conversation with people, you know. It's not really helping because now I've realised something else: people, for some reason, never wanted to listen to me at all. It's like whenever I open my mouth, people would rather ignore me or talk over me.

There I was thinking that my inability to make real friends, even to just 'fit in', was linked to my lack of conversation on trivial matters and gossip. But even as I found myself having things to gossip about, I realised that it didn't change the fact that whenever I interact with people, a chasm between me and them remains.

I've spent way too much time trying to close that chasm, and nothing worked. I just have to accept that there is something about me that makes it impossible to ever fit in. I have to accept that and start finding ways to cope and get used to standing alone in this life watching a world I don't belong to as though standing on the other side of a glass wall.