Friendship is...? 2

When I was fourteen I was really sick of the kids in my peer group.  I hung out with a couple of guys but we really didn't seem to like each other.  No one really knew how to think nor seemed interested in improving their minds or their lives.  All they wanted to do was watch TV hang out in the mall, maybe play sports but not very well and with little enthusiasm.  My life was a bit different already given my parents' divorce.  A couple of my friends had single parents, in one case a mother, in the other a father, but I really had trouble settling into any kind of comfortable friendship with anybody.  I was very restless.

In the summer I started smoking pot and drinking with older kids in the park.  I grew my hair, dressed a bit differently and explored downtown...on my own.  By the way, if anyone younger than twenty is reading this and you haven't smoked anything yet don't even think of starting.  In fact, look for something else to read unless you want to learn from my mistakes.  Do you know what pot does to your puny half-developed brain?  Watch something else instead, but not porn either, that's not how you're going to learn about s-e-x!.

I wasn't interested in any of my juvenile friends accompanying me, though in the fall I went to Gastown with a few schoolmates a few times.  They bored me.  I would have had a better time exploring on my own. I should have felt privileged, I suppose that I was suddenly one of the cool people and they wanted me around.  But I had not, and still haven't, forgotten the way they previously mistreated and ostracised me and I couldn't help but approach them with a certain distrust.

Shortly before my fifteenth birthday I found Jesus and transformed into a teenage Jesus Freak.  Again I was ostracised but then they got interested again.  I was happy, content, and I seemed to actually like people again.  Everyone was my friend, but not my best friend.  I was finding new friends among the other Jesus People.  There were kids my age from my school converting and we were all together in our own little group.  There were also young adults who were suddenly my friends, people from some very interesting backgrounds and situations.  I was hitch-hiking to get around and despite the risk I was meeting people.

These people became some of the closest, dearest and realest friends I had yet ever known.  Yes, we had our new faith in common, but there was between us a real, raw and intimate connection.  We could be vulnerable with one another.  We could bear one another's burdens and tears and share each other's joys.

This was a dizzy and intoxicating adventure of friendship that lasted into my early twenties until everything fell apart and I found myself with perhaps two friends and even them I couldn't really trust.