People ask me quite often why I don't have any friends or seem to mind terribly, and why I'm not in different ministries at church to "meet people" and make friends. I tell them I'm best friends with my mom and that I enjoy just hanging out with my family, and that I really don't mind not having other friends, because I just don't have the time or whatever crap comes to mind.
The truth is, I don't have friends because they won't have me. I have nothing to offer as far as social standing goes, no money to speak of, nothing in my life of great interest, average conversational skills at best... Whatever their reasons, most people at church don't care to have me, so I have shielded myself from their inevitable rejection by withdrawing completely from the social scene. The only time I do anything without my family is when I volunteer in the Office for a scant four or five hours, usually making phone calls in seclusion. When I am free to talk, only the Interns are even close to my age (all of them are over twenty, and I just turned a very boring nineteen); the only conversations I have are with adults. Very rarely do I get to talk with the Guys, and even then, they're just, well... guys.
It's been this way almost as long as I can remember. I connect well with adults, can get along reasonably well with guys, and not all that well with other girls. I've never had a single real friend. The best friends I've ever had were boys. Maybe because they weren't subconsciously competing with me, maybe because their thought processes were simpler, maybe even sometimes just because they thought I was cute; whatever the reason, whenever the tolerant clique of the moment "downsized" it was me who was always "let go".
I spent years in constant fellowship with kids my age utterly ignored by everyone around me, screaming inside for someone, anyone, to reach out and save me from my loneliness, but they were all too busy chasing after the popular people to stop and say hello to a nobody like me. So beautiful, so superficial, so fake, so hypocritical; the more I saw of my peers, the more I was able to convince myself that my lifelong search for friendship wasn't worth it. Things only got worse with the birth of MySpace; I was appalled at what people would post about themselves and others, the sin they would not only inadvertently expose in their own lives, but flaunt so brazenly, and in disbelief at how these kids were allowed to remain in ministry, accoladed and promoted for their "godliness". It just made me sick.
So I tried a home Bible study close by, led by one of our youth leaders, frequently by many of those in prominent places in ministry. I attended for over a year, and never did find acceptance among the phony hypocrites that they by and large turned out to be. I was always there, but they didn't seem to have room in their cliques for me.
Today I heard That One Guy In Particular talking to another intern how he was hanging out at the beach with some of these very people yesterday, and I thought my heart would stop. Does he know who these creatures are? After watching them all these years, I can see that they are exactly the kind of users he has been dealing with his entire life as The PK at our church; why would he open himself up to that again? Is it simply that since we in the Office turned out not to be that way like he had originally assumed, he has let down his guard completely? Or was he really just one of Them all along?
People ask me a lot why I'm not in fellowship, why I don't seem to care whether or not I have any friends, and social life whatsoever. This is exactly why.
"But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you." -John 5:42
