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I think I was just lucky to have friends like Nikki, Kira, and May to help keep me walking forward. I was afraid that the worst thing I could possibly do was make them sad or angry after they brought some light into my darkest times... I suppose I was never the kind of person who could do something so rash anyway? O///O I'm flattered that someone admires me

Wanderingheartache wrote:I think I was just lucky to have friends like Nikki, Kira, and May to help keep me walking forward. I was afraid that the worst thing I could possibly do was make them sad or angry after they brought some light into my darkest times... I suppose I was never the kind of person who could do something so rash anyway? O///O I'm flattered that someone admires me

You're a strong person, don't let others bring you down because they think they are better then you. In regards to your Uncle, I think you should confront him about his 'perviness' and see if you can put him in his place.
My brother did the same sort of thing when I was younger, multiple times in fact. He came into our house, mouched off of us for a year or two without working, complain about how I did nothing to help the family when all he did was sit around and watch tv and play games.
I think the best thing to do is just address a problem when it occurs and forget about the consequences unless they are legal ones.

Probably not the best advice, seeing as I'm am way younger then you, but if any of it stands out to you, try it.

Reminds me of myself, always established as the outcast. However, band is my thing, so I know lots of people.

I have confronted my uncle as of lately, I think he's going to be tamer now considering my grandma is staying here for a while as well and he can't exactly get away with his foul language and habits as long as she's around. If not then, at least I know that he and I have somewhat of an understanding... he will see a side of me that I don't exactly like knowing exists if he starts treating my female friends like objects. (Obviously Celebrities are fine, what are the chances of actually knowing a celebrity in real life? Even then... celebrities have more exposure than "normal" people and most of the people who become famous change drastically)

Something I learned is that you're never too old to give advice, we all experience different things... I met a girl at a convention recently who has huntingson's disease and claims I bitch too much about "insignificance". I still listen to some life advice she has to offer because she has had a tough life and she just turned 18... I show her the same respect and concern I expect from her, she's finally started realizing that I'm not comparing lives but rather I'm just trying to support her and show her that life doesn't have to be experienced alone when you are in pain.


I kinda wish I had stayed in band or something, the minute I made it to high school I abandoned instruments for anime club and other "temporary" vices because clubs didn't last long during my tenure...

Althamus and Wanderingheartache, thank you for your stories. Both of you don't worry about staying pseudonymous, I think that's also what this thread is for. I always consider the name you give yourself to be more meaningful than the one on your driver's license, since that is the name you gave yourself.

Unlike both of you, I have never been unemployed even a single day in my life since leaving university, so I cannot say I have any useful advice. The only vague and unhelpful thing I can think of is that it helps to get to know people, because often it's not only about what you know, but also about who you know.

Althamus, you seem like a very straight arrow and that's commendable. I hope things will go better with your family. To be honest, while I am not distant to my family, I cannot say I'm close and warm with them either. It's mostly my bad. My social skills are focused on my wife and child, and just let other relations slip... but I feel it's first things first, I have to deal with the problems closest at hand first. Perhaps, that's a good advice for you as well? Try to deal with the urgent problems first?

Wanderingheartache, don't worry about you seem to have such a complicated life for someone who is still so young. You have had more love experiences than I had or even have and I'm in my thirties now. With the way your life has been going, I can't help but imagining that to make everything even more complicated, May will somehow come back and complicate everything even more. Sorry for that. :p =But I also think that despite all complications you always seem to try to make the best out of it which is commendable. I think things will get better for you eventually.

I'm not sure if this would qualify exactly as a Broken Heart Club post, but I guess I'll post anyways. I'm really lost with my life right now. I don't feel a depression about it, it's just a sense of....well, confusion. I don't know, maybe I'm just lying to myself and this is a type of depression. It's an odd feeling, one I cant remember having in my life.

I guess I've always put so much pressure on myself to be working towards something and succeeding. I come from a middle-upper class family that has pretty successful people in it all around. Many of my family members are small business owners, or professors, or police, with a few lawyers sprinkled in. Almost all of them grew up as the popular athletic/cheerleader types of their schools. I grew up as the shy kid who played a lot of video games while most of my other relatives were the outgoing popular types. I feel as if a lot of my family(not my parents, but relatives) wrote me off as a lost cause, destined to be a slacker who just sits at home and plays games all day while the other kids would achieve something.

The tides turned dramatically once we all started growing up. I suddenly found a drive in myself to really work hard and succeed during my first few years at college that I never really had up until that point. I studied business, tutored multiple business subjects at a college level, and even got younger relatives of mine jobs at the colleges that I worked at because of my reputation. This all started happening while my other more "promising" younger relatives started either mooching off of our family's success, or getting into trouble. I'm now looked at as the "successor" to a family business that has been in the family for close to 30 years. It still kind of boggles my mind to this day how I went from the lonely shy kid that my grandparents would kind of roll their eyes and buy video games for during holidays, to now being taught how to manage a business. I don't harbor any ill will towards my family, they might have judged me wrong but I can't say I really blame them.

So yeah, I guess part of me is determined to prove them wrong. I don't want to be handed anything, I want to succeed on my own without falling back on the family business. I got a degree in Finance, but the job market is absolutely awful. An acquaintance of mine got a job at a very prestigious financial firm because of his father. This still irritates me to this day, I know five times as much as this guy ever will but he got a position that he's set in for life because of who his daddy is. I don't really have any "connections" in the field of Finance, so I'm just trying to apply all over the place and pray I hear a call back.

I guess I've always had something to strive for, and suddenly I find myself just waiting to hear back from potential employers. I wish there was more I could do or something I could work hard at, it just frustrates me to no end that I'm not even going to be given a chance to perform until I get a call back from one of these places. Like I posted in a previous thread, I was very naive to think that after I graduated college I would suddenly find a good job and be set. Word to the wise: Get an internship during your junior year: PRONTO!

So this has caused some soul searching lately. I've pondered who I am, what I should do, and the type of future I wish to create for myself. I think my goals have started to change as of late. I'm very much contemplating taking over the family business after all, something I've tried to steer myself away from since starting my college path. I really am the only one out of the 8-10 relatives that is up for the task. Not to mention, this soul searching has really shown me that I'm tired of being single and looking for dates. I want to have a family someday, not any time soon because I am in no way ready for it, but maybe some years down the line. I want to have someone I can come home to, and I want them to be able to live the type of lifestyle I was able to while growing up. It just seems like my goals have suddenly changed from "Create your own success" to "Think about the family you want to raise in the future, plan for it", and I find myself suddenly taken aback as of how to proceed in this. I really feel like a hypocrite for giving in and thinking about having a job that I will have acquired simply because of who my dad is, much like that acquaintance I talked about earlier. But I guess I'm starting to feel that with how ambitious my future goals are, I really don't care about being a hypocrite or not at this point.

I'm also worried about losing my identity as a whole because of this. Like, I've played video games since I was 3 and many of my friends have as well. It feels like a lot of us have been kind of drifting away lately and this saddens me. I have a core group of friends that's been together for at least 10 years, and lately they just seem to fight with each other a lot or just show a lack of interest in hanging out. There's not a whole lot I can do for this, but if I suddenly put my effort into running a business, will I suddenly stop becoming a gamer because I have to? I really dread losing that part of myself, because I feel like I would be losing part of my soul simply to try to save up for a house or something. I don't want to ever forget my roots, and what made me the person that I am today, but I seriously fear that this change I'm setting myself up for will also change who I am as a person.

Sorry for the TL;DR. I guess I wanted to put everything that I am thinking about right now down here so I can look back at it later, and see if I've made any progress.

Simple Things like Video Games and Sports can never truly keep people as friends.

Splendidclaw, thanks for your story. Iy's commendable to be so level headed and plan out your life. Even when you have a job and a family you'll be able to spend some time on your hobbies like gaming, etc. Just that you'll have to be more selective since you'll have less time to indulge in them. Yes, you'll change, but I think you'll be happier for it, and not loose what you enjoyed before.

SplendidClaw wrote:I'm also worried about losing my identity as a whole because of this. Like, I've played video games since I was 3 and many of my friends have as well. It feels like a lot of us have been kind of drifting away lately and this saddens me. I have a core group of friends that's been together for at least 10 years, and lately they just seem to fight with each other a lot or just show a lack of interest in hanging out. There's not a whole lot I can do for this, but if I suddenly put my effort into running a business, will I suddenly stop becoming a gamer because I have to? I really dread losing that part of myself, because I feel like I would be losing part of my soul simply to try to save up for a house or something. I don't want to ever forget my roots, and what made me the person that I am today, but I seriously fear that this change I'm setting myself up for will also change who I am as a person

The thing about life is that it changes. The hero's test is to accept change, and sometimes cause it, so that you can chase after happiness. Change makes you lose friends while it allows you to meet new new potential ones. People grow together, and they grow apart. I've got had friends I never heard from again, and I've got friends I still talk to every now and then. I've got a friend who share no real common interests as me, but we still like the company. If friend only means sharing common interests to you, you may want to try redefining what the word 'friend' means to you.

For me there's 3 types:
'Buddy' friends. The type who only are interested in having fun together.
'Average' friends. the type who'll spot you ten bucks and pick you up out of the gutter instead of luagh.
'True" friends. The type who'd take a bullet for you, and you'd do the same.

Life is weird like that. Sometimes you just end up doing something you think you'd never do, and it's not as bad as you thought. Life has phases with fuzzy undefinable borders that blends into each other. Child you thought different than teen you. Your adult self thinks different than either. That's normal. With the change in knowledge, mentality, experience and perspective, sometimes personal beliefs and opinions change. As long as you don't flip flop like a politician every couple of weeks just to appease those around you, it's not something to worry over.

@Daitengu: Do you mind me quoting you on your ideas of friends? Because that's the best definition I think I have ever encountered.

True, Daitengu, life is change! And the broken heart, like broken bones, gets stronger when it heals. Go ride on the waves of life with that new strength!

The O.H.L. wrote:@Daitengu: Do you mind me quoting you on your ideas of friends? Because that's the best definition I think I have ever encountered.

Sure go ahead. I've had time to think about what friends are since I'm 30. I find that people tend to clump everyone into one definition of friend, no matter the age. Which causes alot of problems emotionally. Expecting more than fun from a buddy for example. People go up and down on the list as you and they change along with circumstance. Knowing where your relationship stands keeps things easier.

I forgot one type, I'd add one more spot for a total of 4:

"Bad" friends These are the type to play friend, but want to use you for their own means in the end.
'Buddy' friends. The type who only are interested in having fun together.
'Average' friends. the type who'll spot you ten bucks and pick you up out of the gutter instead of laugh.
'True" friends. The type who'd take a bullet for you, and you'd do the same.


I could talk more about it, but keeping those friend types in mind could make live less painful, if not happier.

My school years were pretty dull and inconsistent in general. Now after played and finished KS, I realize that, although I'm a guy, and that I was the lazy, aloof type of student, I used to value friendship and loyalty a lot, to the point that, without being bossy or overly competitive, I could be a little selfish, even manipulative, and I reacted badly when someone betrayed me or didn't want to follow me, in other words, kinda like Shizune.

During elementary school, I was reclusive and shy for most of its duration, only in the last two years I started to be more open with my class mates, and even befriended with a couple of them. Then what happened? That school also had a highschool part, but out of pure whim, I tranferred along with other two to a new school. It went well until, out of the blue, those bastards betrayed me just in the second day of freshman year. How? They transferred themselves to an afternoon shift, out of pure whim, and me, out of anger, didn't follow them, I just said, screw them, I don't need them. I was alone in that class crammed with people that I didn't know and didn't give a damn about them until the last months, I started to get along with a some of dudes, and all of them were potential friends.

Then what happened? In sophomore year, the class got transferred to an afternoon shift, likely to balance the amount of students in both shifts, my only guess is because it was a time of crisis in the country and the school needed as much money as possible (it's a mid-end private hi-school), and instead of being elitist and raise the montly quota, they lowered the admission standards so everyone can enter to a certain extent so they get a money boost from the entrants and freshmen, eventually the dunces would be weeded out anyway because they can't keep with the academic standards of the school (specially 3rd year, it was a slaughterhouse of dunces) and I met a lot of them, some simply lack the intelligence, while others just lack the culture of studying, I personally was the smart-but-lazy kind of student, my laziness uhmmm...I'll talk about that later, I'm digressing too much.

Back to talk about my social life, some of my potential friends didn't like these changes of the school shifts so they asked and then mananaged to get transferred back to a morning shift, only one of them stayed, and the remaining students of the class were basically a bunch of jocks, bullies and the girls were either bitchy and even more obnoxious that the boys. My luck.

Now I had a dichotomy in front of me (I only lacked a skull on hand), because now my class neighbored the one that the traitors that used to be my friends from Elementary were in. Either I bury the hatchet to give them an oportunity to revive our friendship or forgot about them and try to establish a solid friendship with the remaining dude in my class. I tried both, but my former friends (the traitors) did like everything just to ignore me and to foil any plan of hanging out. That was the last straw. NEXT!

On a side note: I always wondered why those two were SO close together, something like a Misha-Shizune kind of bond, but more disturbing, because they are males, and because they didn't really needed each other for a special reason (like Misha being Shicchan's interpreter) to the point of wondering if they were closeted gays. Interestingly, one of them started to hanging out with they other boys in their classroom, and the other felt betrayed, left off, abandoned and jealous, he went bitchy on his friend, they quarreled and broke their friendship up, and in a very unmanly way from what I've been told. As time passed, the friendship that this dude had with the rest of the classmates started to fade, to the point that he ended up in transferring back to his old school, to be with his old friends, and because he's also too lazy to keep up with good grades.

Meanwhile, in my class, things weren't going so well, I was bullied and teased a lot to the point that I picked up some fights outside doors, I didn't like that place, but so was the other classmate, he was teased and bullied even more than me, during freshman days, he didn't mind, but during sophomore, all the constant annoyances started to take its toll, he started to get depressed and very detached, I helped him, I cheered him up, and we managed to establish a friendship of sorts.

There was yet another a problem, I didn't liked the afternoon shift, at all, I wanted to get transferred back to the morning for the next years, and since I had a friend I tried to convince him to follow me for the next year, so we could get rid of the dorks that teased us both. No avail, I managed to convince the authorities to get transferred, but it was too late for my friend because he didn't even try to do something and it was already too late for me to regret and go rollback the changes. I lost everything once again, I felt betrayed.
The last three years were dull as hell and it wasn't totally free of bullying because, coincidentially, one of the dorks that used to annoy me in my former class also got himself transferred to the same morning class that I was. I screwed everything up.
I didn't go to the prom nor the school trip in the last year because I thought that it was a waste of money but at least I learned to get along with my class mates. Yeah, they teased me, but I learned to tease them back by drawing cartoons of them and even comics about fictional antics based on high-school themed animes and mangas.
Suprisingly, they took them pretty well and actually encouraged me to draw some more comics. I still regret to this that I lost all those drawings. I guess that it was out way to cope with the dullness that is the high school. Sadly, I picked the pace too late as everything was over before I even noticed. I graduated, and all my former classmates started to forget me, we hung out less often to the stopping point.

It was always like that, friendships only last a very short while for me. To be honest, I don't like crowds, and most people are so uninteresing and generic, specially when they are in crowds, maybe I'm wrong in thinking this, but then again, when I finally find some cool people to hang out, they don't last long, it's like fate always find a way to separate them from me or oftentimes they simply stop being interesting. It's not that I can't, but I currently have problems in gathering enough energy and patience to go to classes and to study further in home or at the library. I just don't feel like doing that anymore, I actually dropped out collegue for a couple of years, now I'm back but I still have problems to keep up with the class. The college doesn't have a campus, it's a long trip on bus from home, getting my own vehicle won't make a lot of difference (I actually hate motor-vehicles).

I've been very reclusive all these years, and now that I mentioned that I'm the smart-but-lazy type of student, that laziness really took a toll in my performence when I entered to college, I simply lost a lot of the culture of studying for keeping up with the grades, to aprove oftentimes unsavory subjects, but after thinking things through a lot and playing KS, I decided to change, to give life, the people and myself another chance, to put an end to my slump and my bad luck with friendships.
Heck I didn't even try to date a girl for god's sake.
I feel miserable, but I want to change. I can't go back to the past and change my fate, but even if I can, I will end up doing the same because I don't like to be like everyone else, I just can't be like normal people, that's just boring.

Ok, I know this is off topic, but it's driving me insane: What the Hell is a shift, My school used blocks, so there are A days and B days, There were 5 periods, 1st and 5th period were every day, 2-4th periods were every other day, so you had 8 classes. 1st and 5th were 45 minutes, 2nd and 4th were an hour and a half, 3rd is 2 hours, so we can have 4 lunches.

Alexbond45 wrote:Ok, I know this is off topic, but it's driving me insane: What the Hell is a shift, My school used blocks, so there are A days and B days, There were 5 periods, 1st and 5th period were every day, 2-4th periods were every other day, so you had 8 classes. 1st and 5th were 45 minutes, 2nd and 4th were an hour and a half, 3rd is 2 hours, so we can have 4 lunches.

Oh, I didn't know how to say in english the school hour schedules.
Most schools in my country have classes durin morning and afternoons, and most collegues and some high-schools also have night hours.
You have to choose to enroll in one of them.
In the hi-school I attended, when I enrolled in morning classes, I had to attend to the PE class on a afternoon shift, whereas the year I was forced to attend to an afternoon class, I had to do the PE on morning. In Elementary, I attended it all on afteernoon classes, and the PE class took place just after school. The days I had PE, I returned a little later to home. I hope that you guys understand what I meant.

I remember now that also had attend to catechism classes afterschool twice a week, and if I had to do none of it, I had to go to my grandmother's house, that it was close to the Elementary school I attended, and wait for my father to pick me up, because both of them worked long hours.
I really didn't have a lot of time to socialize and have friends. Once I returned to home, I only had energy left for homework, watching TV or play some videogames. When I was a kid I only saw my parents on evening because both worked long hours, luckily my other granny looked after me on the morning, but most of my neighbors that were about my age attended school on morning, so less chances for me to make friends, although I tried several times to befriend them, to no avail since most of them were rascals that saw me as a nerd, and the good ones, always moved to another neighborhood. It sucks man, it like the "artist bad luck" that Rin mentions in the game. Was I meant to be an artist?