the importance of friends

it's easy to lose our way in the world. this year has been particularly tumultuous for us and it continues to be increasingly so. it also follows 2 pretty challenging years before it. the only thing that has kept us consistently grounded has been spending time with our friends. an activity we certainly took for granted, and it will certainly be challenging to spend quality time (out #1 "love language") with us now being on the other side of the world.

it's funny how easy the action of reaching out to someone seems. we still have the ability to do a voice or video chat, or something more elaborate like meeting up in an MMO or VRChat for the sole purpose of hanging out. i think there's this weird illusion that happens when someone moves away, and the distance creates some natural resistance, or obstacle, to schedule good time together. we will have to be more intentional, bothersome, and assume that ppl actually won't be bothered by us lol.

and yet, easy as it may seem to be to just make the initial act of reaching out, we beat ourselves down, and build up social anxiety, insecurities, self doubt. we start to push away the very thing that would help us recenter. to help spark some energy and motivation back into us. it's a downward spiral. me and Ruby are the most social ones in our group, but we've also been burnt out too, by the recent coming of social anxiety.

then there is also the part about moving to a new city. Sydney has changed a lot over the last 12 years since we've been gone, and i would say mostly for the better, but it makes it alien to us again. we're experiencing culture shock yet again. i don't think people realise just how different western countries are to each other. it's easy to assume that because we all speak english, and eat common foods, and people look past all the subtleties that add up. our language can be incredibly different just by nature of growing up with different vocabulary. that's just one aspect. you have to consider that though yes our country is a messed up colonialised place just like yours is, the events that lead to development, the natives who own this land.. they are all vastly different in history and customs.

if you've never visited another western country and have prioritised visiting countries that have considerable difference (like an Asian country. Japan seems to be popular amongst our social circle), and haven't spent a considerable amount of time outside of the tourism and gimmicky stuff to get to know people's everyday lives, you will never understand this little detail. the expectation that we grew up with the same TV shows, the same brands. ugh this is just one tiny slice of the pie that comes to mind and i could write several posts about this topic, before we even get to most radically different things like Filipino culture (guess what, Southeast Asian cultures are also quite different from each other, and on a broader sense, Asian cultures as a whole).

and i'm mostly talking "very different" as in the vast amount of subtle differences and nuances, vs. the more obvious big ticket items. these tend to be so small that people dismiss them as weird, or wrong. this is especially common from Australians who pride themselves in "honesty", often an excuse to hide subtle casual racism and such. but eh, that's also a bigger topic for another day.

my original point about bringing this up is, we are different people than we were 12 years ago. we literally found out we're a different gender entirely. in fact we discovered we are actually like over a dozen girls in here, lol. we will need to find our people here, all over again.

but to bring things back to the main topic here, considering all of this, i want it to make it a point to reach out to at least one friend every day, and i want to keep the variety, so that we don't burn out any single friend, and so that we are making sure we keep our multitude of connections strong.

i think on a more longer cadence, like weekly, we should aim to reach out to people locally, the people we bookmarked online as "hey this seems like a cool person to hang out with if they'd be down to meet a weird stranger with maybe common interests", perhaps we can pester friends to intro us to ppl. building a support circle for ourselves here is going to be important in the long run.

it will take time. we're eternally healing from a lot. even though there's a bunch of us here, we have limits if we only keep within our own "team", just as any other.

so. if you know any artists(as in, any creatives), queer people, fascism-haters, etc. (bonus if they're plural. we know you're out there.) in Australia, and u think we'd get along, by all means pls intro us! don't be shy and be our matchmaker pretty please.

(and omg, just pls reach out and do stuff with us lol)

💜 Sel~