I think the biggest change that ever came to me was when I first started my high schooling.
I had never really made friends with my classmates back in Danish elementary, since it had been such a jump for me to move from the US to Denmark (around the fifth grade). It took me so long to get to know them and I found their interests were so radically different from mine that it was impossible to get along with them for extended periods of time. I tried here and there to get into their ways of thinking, but it wasn't really very substantial. I could speak with them, have conversations with laughs and jokes, but I didn't think of any of them as friends and I didn't spend more time with them than necessary for the most part.
The reason for this was twofold. The first was the language barrier. Despite the fact that I'm native to Denmark, technically, I had grown up in the US and was in all but legal terms an American when I moved to Denmark. Even though I had learned some Danish when I lived at home, enough to carry out conversations with my parents and sometimes my grandparents, all of which spoke Danish very frequently, it wasn't really enough to conduct natural conversation. When I spoke, everything I said was more than a bit stilted or slow. Even now, I don't think of my Danish as being fluent enough to seem native.
The other problem was that I was a thorny cunt back then, with no degree of tolerance for anyone who wasn't me. There's not much more to say about that one. I don't think I ever really realized I was a thorny cunt until after I had actually changed.
My revelation came in a fairly simple way. When I came to high school, I started out acting more or less as quiet and isolated as possible, having been used to not interacting with anybody and thinking it'd be that way here as well. I wanted to establish that early on so people would leave me alone. That particular act went for about two weeks.
Basically, I liked my new classmates much more than my old classmates from elementary. Because the particular branch of highschool I went to was internationally oriented, many of my classmates were from outside the country. They were in a similar boat to my own. And they acted and thought differently from anyone I had met in elementary. I can't think of anything negative to say about them, so they were essentially the best classmates.
As a result, it didn't seem right to try to stay away from all these interesting and kind people, so I changed my approach gradually from being as distant and insular as possible to trying to be a much less cuntish and warmer person. It was pretty obvious that it was significantly more satisfying to be that person after a brief while. And as part of trying to be that person, it came naturally that I had more patience and acceptance for other people.
My friends still describe me as more than a bit anti-social from time to time, which makes sense because I typically choose to be alone when I can. I just don't dislike company like I used to.
That's my grand tale of actually making friends, basically. Not an incredible journey, but it's nice to look back and feel like a better person than I used to be.
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Congratulations, Oddey, on winning FC's fanfiction competition two years running! You are clearly the man to beat!
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