"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts."
Charles Dickens
So a couple of months or so ago I said this on twitter.
I thought now would be as good time as any to actually start that.
First of all, the types of relationships we have with strangers. Back in June when I tweeted that, I had just had my first experience on Omegle. I found it somewhat disorientating. I still felt self conscious, despite the fact that I was talking to a complete and utter stranger who wasn’t to know whether I was telling the truth or not and I could, in fact, be anyone who I wanted to be. A perfect route of escapism, if you will. If you wanted to, you could literally spend hours pretending to be someone who you’re not. Anyway, after disconnecting the many perverts, horny men and the just downright weird, I found a couple of people who were actually using the site to communicate with people positively. For example, someone said 'you're beautiful/handsome, don't change who you are!' before disconnecting. Someone else said 'Everyone in this room, they got troubles too. Secrets, stories and lies that we never knew...' (I’ve just googled that last one because I thought they might be song lyrics, and they are).
The internet is really one big collection of strangers, and a particular collection of strangers I’ve started to become more involved in is the YouTube community. People have argued that the community has changed too much, that YouTube ‘celebrities’ as they are now known are simply trying to making a profit and have led to a ‘downfall’ in the community, that it no longer exists. I’ve been fairly apathetic towards the situation up until recently when I’ve started to notice some particular examples of how the essence of the community hasn’t changed- for example, the fact that simply by voting, the Harry Potter Alliance won $250,000 to help decrease world suck and generally do amazing things like, well, this explains it pretty well. This year I’m going to Summer in the City, which is my first YouTube gathering. I’m also going by myself. The people on the Facebook page and on YouTube and have been wonderfully reassuring. As Jazza put it in his latest blog entry: "Whenever it is someone’s first gathering, they are meeting people that may become long standing features of their world. YouTube attracts a certain kind of person; we’re all a bit too nerdy for our own good, we all like meeting new people and we all like to show off a bit. No matter how much YouTube changes, no matter how commercial it will or will not become, whether you call them a Pogotribe, Nerdfighters or just plain YouTubers, this kind of person will still be coming to these kinds of meet-ups."
A completely opposite to the relationships we have with the strangers are the relationships we have with family and friends. Family are the people who are supposed to know you best and to some extent I think they do- for example, my mum claims to know she can always tell when I’m upset. I used to think parents- my parents in particular are a good example of this- were too protective of their children. I haven't really been able to understand the emotional link parents have with their children, not being a parent myself, not until about six months ago when a few of my mum's friends/relatives started having children. Before that, I have never felt any real desire to have children, never understood why people ooh and ahh over tiny screaming babies. However, when my mum's friend handed me her ridiculously small baby about six months ago and I watched as she sleepily opened her eyes and grabbed my finger (actually it was more like she grabbed my fingernail, probably in amazement at the length of it.), I felt a lump in my throat, and I understood why parents feel the need to protect their children. Anyway, this has been a bit mushy *coughs*. Let's move on.
I think friendships are on the hardest types of relationships. They usually require the most effort when things go wrong, yet are often the most rewarding. They require a great deal of trust. I'm personally not good at making friends- I talk too much, I try too hard and I know I'm too weird. However, there are times when the other person will graciously look past this and we get to talking about something we have in common (with Lydia it was books, Harry Potter and Hobbycraft, I think).
Friendships can develop in all sorts of ways, and one of the more positive ways they can develop is in to a relationship. Practically all of the boys I've gone out with I've been friends with first. However, it never seems to end well. This is how it goes- I meet someone, become friends with them, they tell me they like me/I tell them I like them, we go out, I get dumped. What I'm far more experienced in is unrequited love. It is an unfair, cruel and horrible thing that shouldn't exist, but yet it does and dealing with it is something I have yet to work out how to do affectively.
There are also relationships I haven't experienced, but may do in the future. I admire people in long distance relationships- whether the distance between them is a couple of hundred miles or a couple of thousand. My parents are a sort of example for this- my dad works as an electrical engineer on cruise ships for about half of the year. When my mum comes back from holiday, there will be goodness know how many miles between her and my dad (who is in Alaska at the moment). Another relationship that I haven't experienced- and I can't say at this moment in time whether I will or not- is the kind of relationship that has lasted decades. I'm talking about the elderly couple who you see walking down the street holding hands that have been together for goodness knows how long and are still in love. Sounds impossible, but it happens.
To predict the rest of my day, I’ll probably finish watching Sherlock as I’m half way through the first episode (by the way Benedict Cumberbatch is a fantastic name. What were his parents thinking?), sunbathe if the sun comes out, finish reading You Shall Know Our Velocity, start on reading for uni, see if I need to get any more food/drink for tonight’s film night, hoover and then flop on the sofa.
B xxx :)
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