I'd surrender, if only I could

I have come to realize quite a few important things over the past few days.

Firstly - emotional closeness is built on common experiences. Not talking, but just hanging out with no reason, or doing something fun. Devoting time to people that are important to you. Validating your understanding of their words through the feedback process of seeing their actual behavior. And that is the point of parties or get-togethers and going out drinking together. The point of all the activities I have systematically ignored as meaningless.

No wonder I feel distant from the world. And this is one of those things that you cannot really fix overnight - especially if your friends don't invite you anywhere any more because they "know" how it will turn out.

Secondly - this closeness has to be there with a girl before it can develop into anything more for me. Otherwise, it just feels so wrong. And not in some absolute moral sense. Just emotionally. Raw wrongness. Even with a nice, intelligent girl who I could see myself with... Learned this the hard way recently -- and yes, I'm capable of feeling like complete crap the morning after, even when practically nothing happened the night before.

Some days I just wish I could be like normal men my age.

Thirdly - we are all victims of our past experiences. And old habit, once developed, are hard to change. Same goes for assumptions about your friends. If a friend of yours used to be a complete moron and a prick, you still assume he behaves that way even when he has actually changed and does not do that any more with others. But since you so expect this to be the case, this is what ends up happening, partially because that is the only thing you look for in his behavior, and partially because he is used to interacting with you in those ways and is also a victim of his own habits.

The only way out of that situation is to confront it, and have both sides acknowledge this might be the case. Because it doesn't really help if just one side changes his ways.

All three points are important lessons to be learned, of course. It's just that I am tired of pushing forward in my social and emotional development. The past few months have probably aged me more than the two years preceding them - but the further I go, the more clearly I see the long road still ahead. Then again, that is always the case with true progress.

I have failed, I have been forsaken
I've been scorned and misunderstood
I have lost, my life has been taken
I'd surrender if only I could

-- Ayreon, The Charm of the Seer

But, as usual, surrender is not really an option, so I will just keep moving onwards. Not always easy, but worth it, at least judging by the past descisions.