Part 4: Survival of the friendest

Part 4:  Survival of the friendest

Recap:  Pics & video of me posted.  I was humiliated.  It was awful.  I wanted to die.  Didn't want to get revenge.

I have thought about what happened and how it happened.  What I am dwelling on though is how I survived. 

The last post was an existential view of suffering.  I know that more bad days are coming.  Pets will die.  Family will get sick.  Losses at home or at work.  In any given week one day will be worse than the other 6.  How to face that uncertain oscillation of the everyday? 

I hate the answer due to the vague goodness of the word itself:  Community.  Or the synonym in this case that makes just as little accurate meaning:  Friendship.

Humans are social creatures.  We thrive in groups.  Once a group becomes too large small-sub groups band together for mutual protection and benefit.  Yes, this does explain the jock, punk and prep cliques in school.  I have no offering to explain the chess club though.  Weird folks they are.

Those sub-groups are what we call our community, or friends.  They are people who we live around, work with and help out. 

Some communities are forced together.  Classes at school.  Work.  Prison.  (all three can seem the same at times).  Even in prison there is a place of worse punishment.  Solitary confinement.  Why would NOT being gang beaten be worse?  Because even if you don't like the people you're forced with, they are better than loneliness.  There is so so so much comfort in knowing you're in something with others. 

That definition done, I want to approach the next:  Be true to yourself/be yourself/do you.  It is a overused cliche (which overused is a superfluous adjective) to "just be yourself and people will like you more." 

What does that even mean?  Stop cos-playing as a crime-fighting former gymnast who has John Merrick's disease?  Talk the same way in front of your mother as you would in the shop at work?

Friends/community surround those who are like them.  It's natural.  We feel safer that way.  When you try to join a community/group of friends you are confronted with a frightening choice:  adjust to their norm, or stay in your style of behavior/dress and risk rejection. 


I grew up with a lot of rejection.  I didn't really get a chance to be anyone else.  No community seemed to want to take me.  As an adult I'm comfortable with the idea of telling jokes, being silly, being smart and being kind because that is what I am.  If someone doesn't like that then I have lost nothing.

When this episode blew up it happened on Facebook.  Where you "friend" people.  It was the locale of this personal humiliation, and it was where help came from.

The people who rushed to my defense, my aid, my comfort were family and friends.  They knew me for who I am, and they did not judge that.  The cared about ME.  Not for any benefit that I bring, but because I am a part of their lives.  And on the other side of that incident I am pouring with gratitude for them.

If you want to become indestructible, then be in a community and be you.  Don't fake your personality to be accepted.  Accept a smaller community and know they are not just there for the numbers.  Don't worry about social status.  Don't concern yourself with anyone single person's opinion.  If you can't be cool and awesome as you with a community, then whatever group that rejects you does not understand or comprehend your epicness. 

If you feel you have no friends look around.  It might be you mean you don't have the friends you want to have.  Some of the people who had my back the strongest that night were a surprise.  You never know who around you is going to catch you when your feet are kicked out.  Not faking is the best way to ensure it's not out of pity.

It becomes the answer to "you and what army?".  Apparently I'm part of the "miracle healers and epic awesome people with more love than believable division".  And they have no idea how much they did for me.