My best friend visited me at uni last weekend, coming for 16 hours overnight to go clubbing and see me. He literally had 2x 5-hour coach journeys the mad bastard. I told all my uni friends about this two weeks in advance and asked them to be there and to hang out and go out with us. On the night only 2 out of the 10 were really there. The others all fucked off with various excuses. I canāt put into words just how at home and happy I felt having my mum visit me last week and then my bestfriend too. There was no drama, easy conversation and just relaxation in general.
When I talk to my uni friend AS he is unbelievably insecure. Every thing he brings up in conversation is some kind of masculinity competition I swear to god. I eat my dinners with him as we are both catered and every night he talks about how many push ups, pull ups and sit ups heās done, how many fucking nuts heās eaten and why they are such great food, complains about the same fucking girl who heās already been rejected by but continues to be her best friend all day. When he went on this stupid camping trip over the weekend he walked 90km in 3 days. He talks about how it was anĀ āadventureā and how theĀ ādangerā made him feel revived and alive. He talked as if heād done something amazing I should be in awe of. Seriously though? I wouldnāt give a flying fuck if heād climbed Snowdonia. The danger he was in? It was just him being a fucking idiot e.g. walking down a marshy hillside AT NIGHT or being subjected to only eating beans all weekend WHEN HE COULD HAVE JUST BROUGHT SOMETHING ELSE. Thereās a weird pretentiousness that some people have about the outdoors and he most definitely has it. I love camping and hiking myself donāt get me wrong, but in my opinion it should be a relaxing experience focused on talking to people and campfires and NOT walking all day long from dawn until after dusk when itās too dark to make a fire and focusing on photography all day to the point that you donāt fully experience it. He just wonāt shut up about it either but he clearly canāt take a fucking hint that I actually respect him less for this stupid excursion rather than more.
The next issue on my mind has to be my girl failures. I consider myself to be pretty optimistic about the future in general. Not until recently had I considered that I might not even have a successful romantic/sexual interaction with a girl before the end of uni. This situation is dire though. Iām not meeting many girls at the moment but even at times when I AM meeting many, I donāt get anywhere. I donāt know why either. Iām no longer either too forward or too shy, I try to flirt (though I suck at it I guess), about half the girls Iām into are quite rude to me etc. They say that you need confidence to be successful romantically but how can I have that kind of confidence when I have only failed and failed and failed my entire life? I kissed a girl on a summer camp type of thing when I was 15 but thatās it. Iām 20 at the end of the year and Iāve made no progress since then. It hurts me internally so badly because my girl failures have always been at the forefront of my mind. Iāve never been able to get fully engrossed in a hobby or subject that Iād forget girls and so itās always been a painful hindrance to my existance. Whatās more, nobody seems to give a shit that I donāt get with anyone. My friends donāt give me advice because theyāre too self-centred for that shit and often it feels like they think theyāre in competition with me over everything rather than being up for helping me. Iāve been feeling very low for the whole last week except when my mum and friend came to visit. Literally both days they were coming I was hoping they wouldnāt come because I wanted to be alone but then the moment they arrived I felt so happy.Ā
When I see and talk to my real best friends I genuinely have a warm feeling in my heart. My best-friend/crush CF who lives on the other side of the world snapchats me still. I kid you not that girl is so pretty not only on the outside but she is such a kind soul with a beautiful creativity I can not resist. When She takes a good photo of herself I cry a little. My heart skips a beat and I canāt help but admire her face. Maybe that sounds weird but when Iām looking at her picture, even during a hectic pre-drinks, Iām in a warm bubble and it always makes me smile. With some people on snapchat you just delay opening their snaps because you canāt be fucked to reply yet or maybe you want to wait the appropriate time. With her, I either open it immediately or if Iām very busy I save it for when I need something to just calm me down. I do think Iām somehow in love with her which is silly but even my drunk self thinks so. Drunk-me has declared on multiple occasions that Iāll marry her.
On a totally different note I want to talk about national identity. I claim 5 which makes this very confusing. By heritage on one side of the family Iām Greek. Iām happy to be called Greek and I love Greece - the place, the language, the people, the food. The issue is that itās my motherās side so nobody thinks Iām Greek which means theyāre always surprised when I defend it in arguments and talk about my love for the culture. I joined the Greek society at uni in the hopes that I might get more in tune with the culture here but unfortunately that went terribly. I just feel so alienated when I go to the society meetings because everyone just speaks in fluent Greek and ignores the ones like myself who are not fluent. On top of that like half of the people there are Cypriot so they have a weird fucking accent which makes understanding them even harder. Thereās literally no point me being there and they make me feel like an outsider. Even though Iām on a Greek intramural football team, the other members just ignore the fact that I donāt speak it for the most part. This is exacerbated by the fact that Iām 100% the worst player on the team though Iāve greatly improved and I know for sure that one of them is always mouthing me off in Greek behind my back. I just donāt belong. Similarly I joined Balkan society cos my Dadās side of the family is Serbian. Itās such a small society and spread out over different ages that I canāt just blend in-itās shitty af. I have two Bosnian friends at the uni and they joked about how I still canāt speak the language a couple weeks ago. They also understand Balkan culture so much better than I ever could and wear adidas trackies unironically. Again, I just donāt belong with this crowd. Iām just not even like the other Serbian members of the family because they are so aggressive and nationalistic and all that but thereās no way I could ever be that. I donāt have a passion for the motherland, I donāt enjoy plum brandy moonshine, I donāt speak the language, I havenāt been in protests against NATO and the UN bombing Serbia. Because of my surname, I get called a Serb a lot. Lots of annoying nicknames which I donāt enjoy if Iām honest, even if they are lighthearted. Things like being compared to Vidic (whoāll fucking murder ya) or Slobodan Milosevic, being called a vampire, serial killer, genocidal maniac, squatting slav etc. etc. Itās just not me and it made me feel like I was not really welcomed fully into being a Brit even though I was born in London and lived there my whole life. My accent and my surname prevent me from being seen as British by pretty much everyone. My accent is a totally fucked mixture of various English ones and then Canadian + American too. The North Americans give me strange uncomfortable looks when I try to say Iām one of them because I never really know their culture in detail enough to fully be one despite possessing citizenship. To sum up I donāt feel like Iām any one of my nationalities and I would gladly be seen as any of the 5 except Serbian - the only one I get labelled as thanks to my surname - as it is something I will never truly be.
This kind of leads me on to my fake exterior. I think Iāve been over-compensating with gimmicks and characteristics so I could distract people from who I really am. Things like making jokes about the peculiarities and eccentricities of my Serbian family, wearing cowboy boots/ slavic football kit/ sunglasses to the club, only drinking absolutely terrible novelty factor drinks such as Buckfast wine and WKD or the big one which I canāt help telling new people about: my gollum impression. I do all this random shit because I think it makes me seem exciting and fun to be around but when I run out of them, I realise Iāve made friends who donāt really know about my serious side. When I put away the gimmicks they still expect me to be overly-outgoing and excitable so when they see me in either a normal state or a low-one, they seem to leave me alone to the point that I get very lonely. I donāt feel like I can talk to anybody about any of my problems because I only hang out with these people when Iām being weird. I canāt live my life normally with my uni friends because I donāt live in their flat all together. I donāt get little interactions whilst making breakfast or doing some work. All i get is pre-drinks and clubbing. I do enjoy it when I get people on their own and we have proper conversations. Iām good at one on one chats whilst we do things together which is why my date with that girl a few months ago went so well despite us being diametrically opposed in every aspect of life. I just feel like somethingās missing here. This loneliness enhances my desire to find a girl for once. I genuinely feel so sad all the time at the moment. At school I didnāt use gimmicks and an overly-outgoing side - I was only myself and serious around strangers and then friendly among friends. It resulted in me having very few friends and feeling very isolated but now me trying the other way around helped me make lots of friends initially but then has not led to as many deep meaningful connections as I would have liked.
What really doesnāt help any of this shit is the fact that I am a catered uni student. Unfortunately this means I donāt fucking get lunch served to me BUT I ALSO DONāT GET ANY FUCKING KITCHEN APPLIANCES APART FROM A MICROWAVE WITH WHICH I CAN COOK. This means Iām fucking starving most of the time and when I get hungry I get emotional - especially angry or sad. What am I supposed to do? Pot noodle is so unhealthy and I donāt like eating pre-made meals out of a microwave very much. I really miss having the opportunity to make my own food I canāt tell you. I eat so much junk food just because of the lunch situation. Luckily I have a fucking steam engine of a metabolism so I donāt gain weight from it but imagine how healthy I could be if I was able to prepare fresh food. Oh my. So sad.
