Can you be homesick for a place or person you’ve never met? I feel homesick all the time.
We dream. We dream about our dream unjob, a dream home (or apartment cause that’s what us TLG’ers are stuck with), that dream car, the dream wedding, the dream instagramable destination, our dream ultimate self (or at least our dream of how we appear on social media), and our dream love, but does one ever dream about their dream friend? Other people are everything and you are what you think not only of yourself, but what you think of others.
Who do you turn to when you get ghosted by that guy you met by the swipe of your finger? Who do you turn to on holidays when your family isn’t so good? Who do you turn to when your heart gets broken or your rent controlled apartment balcony collapses? You turn to your friends.
If you could have a dream friend, who would that be? What would you do together? What would silence feel like when there was no sound? How would this person support that missing piece… you know that thing you’re homesick for even if you’ve never seen it, or been there, or truly felt it.
Real Friends by Kanye West
Yeezy raps,
“I’m just lookin’ for some real friends
All they ever do is let me down.
Every time I let somebody in
Then I find out what they’re all about
I’m just lookin’ for some real friends
Wonder where they’re all hidin’ out”
Have you ever seen a really tall guy hanging out with a bunch of other really tall guys? How did they even get together? Did one guy say, “Hey you see things from up high too! I like your perspective, lets chill?” We’re all animals here and perspective is everything. It’s natural to want to hang out with someone that ‘looks like you’ (or your instagram). There’s been a friend shift. People are making new real life friends from instagram and why not? If we swipey swipe people we’d like the phuck, why not look for friends on your phone too? Like finding someone to date, if you like yourself enough (or like your own photos), then you look for someone that mirrors the things you like about yourself. People are seeking friends based off the curation of someone’s instagram profile. Butt girls with followers hang out with other butt girls with followers and digi-artists are facetime geeking out with other insomniac Adobe kidz. It’s all a beautiful mess and maybe it’s the answer to actually finding people who are like you or who you aspire to be like… or maybe it’s sad we can’t meet people like us away from our phones. I can’t decide.
Regardless, you are what you eat as much as who you hang out with.
I never had an imaginary friend as a kid, I’ve always felt very secure with it just being me, so much so that I can go six months without talking to a single human and be a-ok. I still feel like I’m that kid just seeking the opening page to some faraway place where I can just be totally me. I always say that I’m most free when I travel alone because no one knows me and I can dance in the streets of Barcelona and be a temporary exotic creature that will disappear into a myth. But the truth is, it would be nice to travel with someone else and dance in the streets together. Up until recently, I never felt comfortable dancing in the streets and being completely me in front of the people I surrounded myself with.
I used to so badly want to belong to a “group” of friends. I’d go to the beach and see people that looked like me together and wonder, “how do I meet people like that?” I’ve always had issues with asking for help or reaching out to people. Even if I were to meet my dream friend, I probably wouldn’t reach out. I’m someone that needs to be invited, and that’s a major flaw in my operating system. This applies to jobs, dating, parties, and anything social. I want to feel like I’m wanted and worthy, but you get what you put in and for a long time I didn’t put a lot into my relationships with people. A few years ago I started to show up to everything. If I met someone who invited me somewhere, I’d say yes and before I knew it, I was that person on the beach hanging out with a group of laughing hyenas. I had never felt emptier and more alone, much more alone then when I was actually by myself. Like Yeezy’s poetry, I kept finding out what people were all about.
I have so much to say and the people I surrounded myself with had nothing to say and when they did say something it was usually negative and often negative about each other. What did that make me? Negative and a bad friend. I couldn’t understand why I felt like I was in a shallow hole, literally, in the hole where I could see all the beautiful people and world moving, but I was scared that if I stepped out of the hole, I’d be alone… again.
Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to call someone up or to be around people, but every moment I spent with these people, I felt like I was betraying myself and them. Maybe they liked themselves and it was messed up for me to pretend. They are my ghosts and I still have moments where I’d rather be in the company of an unfriendly ghost then no one at all, but then I remind myself who I am. YEEZY BITCH.👊🏽
They say if you have one good friend, then you’re lucky and that’s better than a bunch of fake friends.
Dream friends are real. I promise, they are real.
“You can have it all, but not all-in one person.” – TLGer long time friend.
I agree, but to be me, a dream friend isn’t perfect or all of something. I’m not all of anything. For me, a dream friend is how someone makes you feel.
I learned what I wanted in my dream friend recently and it’s four things:
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👆🏽:it’s someone I can dance in front of, like fully just bust out with a dance move and feel completely free to move my body the way I want to without being judged or them caring what other people are going to think.
- ✌🏽: it’s someone who doesn’t care what other people look like or what they are wearing or what their body shape or skin color or age is, or if they wear a turban or what their sexual preference is, or what they choose to do to their body. It’s some who looks the way they feel.
- 👌🏽: it’s someone who has something to say and always tries to do what is right even after being wrong. It can take a life time to know what you want to be when you grow up, but in the meantime, being a good human isn’t so bad.
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🖖🏽: lastly, someone who doesn’t consider watching one’s instagram stories as catching up on a friend’s life or using ‘likes’ as transactions.
Can you think of any friends in your life right now that wouldn’t be your dream friend, if so, why are you still friends? I have people like this in my life and all I can say is people are complicated and just because one disagrees doesn’t mean you should dispose of them. We so quickly dispose of people today. If you don’t like what someone says, you just unfollow and ghost them instead of having a simple conversation. 👻 No one is perfect.
A few months ago I went to a disco dance Japanese Pop night in a hidden hole-in-the-wall gem deep in LA with a friend. We walked into the hole and immediately, my heart started pumping to the beat, my ass started thumping and I was about to channel my inner Austin Powers. “I’m with my people and my people are dancing to my music!” I seriously couldn’t have been more excited.
The moment we walked in the bar, my friend’s entire energy shifted. I had seen him do this once before and brushed it off, but this time my eyes were open. He smiled, tried to like it, and moved to the music a bit, but all while judging everyone around him. “There’s so many fucking hipsters here. I hate hipsters.” Again and again for two hours he made fun of how people moved to how they looked to what they were wearing and I felt so small because I loved who was around me and what they were wearing and how they were moving. I stoped moving the way I wanted too. I danced, but it was my insides that stood still. I was too worried what he was thinking of me and everyone else. The thing is, I’m a hipster and I love them so much that I made a documentary on them! Although I saw this friend in a shaded light, he emulates so much beautiful light too and he’s a good person and again people are complicated. He once said to me, “People are not what they appear to be in their photos because you can’t see their insides.” I saw his insides that night and they didn’t look like his photos. I questioned who I knew… Him or his instagram?… and it made me really sad. If you hang out with someone who cares what other people are wearing, then ultimately you care what they’re wearing too… No friend is perfect, what’s important is how they make you feel and how you make them feel back. For years I stood by people who judged others based on exterior appearance and it never felt good and I stayed quiet and sometimes laughed with the pack, but in truth, we were all lacking confidence and humility. I think everyone should be a unicorn and look the way they feel!🦄
Again, dream friends are real.
Everyone, every moment, good or bad has a purpose. Your young 20-30 something life is a constant act of letting go and learning what you don’t want so you figure out what you do want. A few months ago I was in LA’s small but mighty little district of Palms. I had just been at a backyard comedy show put on by some strange dudes that looked like greasy truck drivers and lumberjacks. They sold hot sauce and spat jokes about A.I. sex dolls, aging women choosing to have “alone babies,” and what if Marilyn Monroe was alive today and had an instagram account… Could you even fucking imagine the beautiful disaster? I hadn’t felt that free to laugh the way I laughed in I don’t know when. It wasn’t that I laughed hard, but I laughed to a point where it made my heart hurt… almost as if I was homesick for that moment. I sat with five people I barely knew and had been invited by someone I had “known” for years but didn’t really know. From the moment I met this human, I knew she was special. There is no denying the magic she puts out and the magical people she attracts. She’s different. A misfit, like me, but it’s not just being a misfit, it’s a light that struggles but stays lit even when everything appears dark. Her shadow moves when she stands still. Her name is Mary. I met her through two other extra ordinary humans, Lucy and Chris, that I’ve lived a few blocks from for seven years and didn’t make the effort to truly know them until now. Their shadows move too. They always invited me to their magical fort tents and backyard banjos, and all it took was for me to finally show up. When I met Mary, her head was half shaved. Lucy’s head was half shaved too and I thought it was just some feminist thing they were doing, but I later learned that Mary had had three brain surgeries and Lucy shaved her own head with Mary before her third head slicing operation. If that’s not a dream friend, I don’t know what is. For the past two years, Mary invited me to her craft club nights and exotic mustard parties, and although I could see her so clearly, I just never went. That’s what happens in LA, time goes by and with no reason, so do people. Mary recently moved… and so did Lucy and Chis… but that feeling will stick with me forever, that feeling of people who want nothing from you but for you to just be completely yourself.
That night after the comedy show, me and five other misfits walked in LA’s blizzering cold streets, so cold we might have gotten one goose-bump, and we popped into the unexpected gem of Palms, Roy Choy’s Kogi Taqueria. That heart hurt feeling I felt, while everyone chatted, I was trying to process. I didn’t know these people and my grinch heart kept growing so fast and I just lost my sense of words. Mary is a fan of the app Nextdoor, where you can post about things in your neighborhood just for your neighbors, and if it wasn’t for that app and her quirky free-minded interests, never in my life would I have known or even gone to that backyard word vomit moment of shooting the shit and sex robot giggles. As everyone was pounding the Korean Spiced Fries, Mary said,
“You guys are my dream friends.”
Heart stopped. What Mary?
I had never heard the words “dream” and “friend” used together. I immediately thought she was referring to everyone else but me because I’m nobody’s dream anything, but that moment solidified who I wanted to be. One day, someday, I want to be someone’s dream friend.
We all look for different things in people. Like a dream, relationships can can be short or maybe for just one night, but that doesn’t take away from what is real. Your dream friend may be the complete opposite to mine. I’m someone who shows up differently in moments and time and that’s what I look for in my dream friends. Time is distance to me and sometimes I’m far away but it doesn’t mean I don’t think of those I love. A dream friend might be the girlfriend that takes you out for fireball shots after getting dumped. A dream friend might be someone who likes your photos and watches your story on instagram… But whomever your dream friend is, if you are your true self, you will friend each other and if you catch a leprechaun, then you might find more than one. 🍀
The moment I came out, as me, I felt the silence by those I thought were my friends and it was painful, but what it did do was make room and bring me closer to home. I still get homesick, but now I know there are lions and tigers and bears venturing on the same path as I search for where I belong… and those are my kind of people.
To Lucy, Chris, & 631
There are no coincidences. Meeting you all years ago was meant for this moment right now. There is so much I don’t know about you, so much time lost, but you all embody who I dream to be like and what I dream to feel when I build relationships in this new life of mine.
631, if you’re reading, thank you for the never ending talks about everything and for this past holiday, it meant so much to me. You are my dream friends because you make me feel free. You only have ever existed in my real life and not my phone. You set the standard for what I seek in all my relationships going forth. Thank you for letting me dance. There are special people and then there are dream friends.
#DreamFriends
Personal
I’ve been struggling past few months and I found myself asking the universe for some mercy. It’s made me so down that I haven’t written, but sometimes breaks are good. The Last Gen is the love of my life and relationships are complicated. There are no rules, but my intention is for it to be a beautiful magical space that questions everything, brings imagination back to life, and tells the truth, but hurts no one. My stories are mine and I always seek for some type of moral in everything. I’m always questioning what is the right thing to do and say and it often gets me in trouble, but if I writer didn’t write about what they know then they wouldn’t have a story… a real story, not an instagram “story.” Everyday I’m learning what I want and don’t want and thank you for reading.
Thoughts become things. Love is everything. You are the dumb turkey of this fable and you are part of my dream.
Sincerely,
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