Random Acts of Art

The strange thing is that lonely people with a lot of problems always think
that their problems are generally known.
They hate their family and colleagues for not helping them.
In actual fact no one knows about your problems.
Even people who have gone through the same kind of problems as you are
experiencing, can’t see the difference between people who choose to be on their
own and people who don’t know how to make friends.
So if you recognize yourself in this article.
Don’t worry.
Nobody knows it’s about you.

Going through puberty is a difficult time.
A lot changes.
Not only your body changes, but also the way you think, the way you deal with
problems, the way you deal with people. Even your behavior changes; you learn
how to behave as an adult male or female (by imitating the behavior of your
father or mother).

A lot can go wrong.
And since there are so many developments going on there are a lot of different
problems adolescents can run into.
And just like most people with problems adolescents with problems are selfish
and only feel at ease with people with the same kind of problems.

And that is where the trouble starts.
As adults we tend to forget how limited the world of children and young
adolescents is.
Children will only talk with children their own age or maybe one year older or
younger.
Except at the start of puberty.
Thirteen year olds feel that twelve year olds are childish.
So they’ll only talk to children who are older. But fifteen year olds feel that
thirteen year olds are childish and won’t talk to them.
So thirteen year olds can only talk to other thirteen year olds and fourteen
year olds.

And then there are the geographical boundaries.
Children and young adolescents only know children within a 50 meters radius of
their home and only talk to children within a 3 meters radius of their seat at
school.
Children at the front of the class don’t talk with children at the back of the
class.

So when you’re thirteen there are about 10 children with whome you could be
friends.
If your thirteen and your parents are divorced and none of those 10 children
have parents that are divorced, it’s very easy to feel an outcast.
If you’re gay or have autism or some other less frequent problem it’s even less
likely that you know anyone with the same problems. And more likely that you
feel an outcast.

If you felt an outcast as a child you probably also felt picked on.
You felt that (some) children where mean spirits that took great joy in hurting
you.
But actually they weren’t.
They were just frightened children with their own problems that hurt what they
didn’t understand.
(How could they have understood, since you never told them what hurt you…)
So you got used to doing things all by your selves.

                                                  ***

Everything changes when you turn eighteen.
You go out to work or to study.
You have a lot more money, join a club or go to a pub.
In some countries you’re considered an adult, in others almost an adult. And
all of a sudden you find that every one between 18 and 81 wants to talk to you.
You find that there are hundreds of people who want to talk with you, and
dozens with the same problems as you have.

The only thing is that you have gotten used to going it alone.
You shrug people off.
You’re still afraid that people will hurt you.

It took me till I was in my early thirties before I realized that something had
changed.
In my teens children enjoyed setting me up for jokes that I didn’t understand.
In my thirties I came to understand that being friends isn’t a zero sum game:
People will only talk to you when they enjoy talking to you.
So for those of us who where picked on in our teens it’s very easy to drive the
people away who want to befriend us.

It’s very easy to prove that nobody wants to befriend you.
But if you try it’s as easy to find people who do want to befriend you.
And with the much bigger choice you have, it’s very easy to avoid the few
people you don’t like.

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