On Sunday, I woke up late and couldn't write a thing. Actually, I
couldn't do much of anything. It was one of those weird lonely
weekends where I was experiencing a particularly 21st century American
problem: Having an entire day with nothing to do and no one I must
meaningfully interact with. So, I lay in bed watching videos on my
computer, feeling a rising anxiety. This always happened at the end of a
teaching semester for me, when I had huge gaps of time that were not
pre-structured. Having huge gaps of free time tended to give me anxiety
and loneliness.
I fell asleep on Saturday around 2 in the afternoon and had this dream:
I was living on earth when the Apocalypse happened--a series of atomic
bomb explosions. In the dream, I expected to be taken to heaven in some
kind of a "rapture" but I was left on Earth. I was "Left Behind," like
those movies starring Kirk Cameron. Somehow I survived (I couldn't
remember how) and I found a few other survivors and together we
discovered a whole different world underground, where people were safe
from the Apocalypse. When we eventually returned to the Earth's
surface, everything was rebuilt, but it felt all wrong: artificial,
empty somehow. Plus our eyes had trouble adjusting to the brightness of
the sun. So we headed back underground.
I awoke in a sweat, and drank two glasses of filtered water and sent my
dad a text message, asking if I could do laundry at their house. He
said sure. Thirty minutes later, my dad, mom, and grandma arrived to
pick me up.
As my laundry was being machine-washed, we all sat in my parents living
room in Brea, talking about how hard it is for adults to make friends,
and wondering why this is. I had the kind of relationship with my
parents where we could talk about things like this. It both comforted
and disturbed me to learn that my parents, who are 58 and 60 years old,
still have trouble making good friends.
Why is it okay, even expected, for kids to have a best friend, but it
sounds weird for an adult to have a best friend? If anything, adults
need best friends more than kids, because they have way more
responsibility and emotional trauma. Why are adults so often alone,
without a best friend? Is this an American thing? Is it a 21st century
thing? And what are the reasons? What are the causes? And how does
an adult human being even go about finding, and keeping, a best friend?
