Update

If you haven’t read the last post don’t read this one.

Well the funeral went ok, no real problems. The guy was there. I didn’t even want to know which person it was. I still want my friend to go seek help but I was able to get her to talk about it. she said that she can talk about it but just doesn’t like to because she had to talk about it all the time when it happened. I can understand that. She told me more. She told me details that I am sure not going to share here. The funeral was on Saturday, after the funeral I went to my grandparents for my grandfathers birthday, cake ice-cream the usual crowd. I was looking at my cousin who is (I’m fairly sure) only one year younger than the youngest girl. I realized just how innocent she is, I’m very glad that my cousin is not like my friends. As I’m writing this I’m thinking about what my uncle would do if my cousin was caught hanging out with guys my age, wow that would be an ugly site. The youngest girl told me that she has always had older friends and that she’s hung out with 20+-year-old guys for a long time. While I don’t like questioning other peoples parenting skills, this does concern me a bit. Admittedly she is a pretty good kid so they must have done something right, and I have seen her with her parents and its definitely a house with plenty of love, which goes a long way towards keeping a child on the right path. Ok well I say she’s a good kid but she definitely does a lot of bad things. But just because you do bad things does not always make you a bad person. My small victory this weekend was getting them all to wear seat belts, at least in my truck. I can speak both from first hand experience and from experience working at a racetrack, seatbelts are your friends. So that was my little victory, baby steps here. My co-worker was giving me ideas about how to get they to stop drinking, while I agree with her and her plan is fairly good. The problem is that if it came right down to it and said its either stop drinking or stop hanging out with me (she had a better plan but that’s basically what it comes down to) I am not all that confident of which way they would go. Actually I think one or two of them would be on my side, one would definitely stick with the alcohol. But she is the oldest of the group and I’m not sure that there is anything I can do to help that one. You may have noticed this already but its the youngest one of the group that I have become closest friends with. She's both the one that I think needs the most help and the one I see as having the most potential for great things. Oh well there is one other one who might need more help, but she is a much tougher case. I think if i can help the first one then maybe the second would be that much more willing to listen to my advice. Obviously I’m not an idiot I realize that I have no training to help some of the very serious problems that some of these girls have, but I am able to help by finding out what some of these problems are and getting them to seek help from appropriate places. The girl who was raped ( i just want to scream and cry and maybe break shit just at the thought of that word, and some one so young... ) for instance, I would never dream of trying to help her directly with the mental repercussions of such an event, but I have given her the phone number of the rape crisis center, and I am now going to try to persuade her to actually call them. She also told me that she had contemplated suicide in her past. This scared the hell out of me. She told me that it was a while ago, that she didn’t like who she was, she didn’t like who she was hanging out with and hated school and everything else, she went on to say that she has changed and that she likes the people she’s around now that she actually enjoys school right now and that she loves who she is now, and she has goals and dreams. That made me feel better. But it is something that I will always keep in the back of my mind, because she did say that when she felt that way she didn’t tell anyone at the time, except her mother, eventually. What a weekend. I did hang out with two of them for most of Saturday, I at least kept them away from alcohol for that day. And seeing as the other two went to a party with guys that I went to school with where one of them ended up getting drunk and having sex with a guy my age, the other girl at the party didn’t drink and didn’t have sex. The one that did get drunk, she’s the one who has serious depression issues. She is having a hard time figuring out who she is. Which reminds me, the youngest told me that she was trying to figure out who she is, she then said "does that make any sense at all" I kinda laughed and said yes that’s extremely normal everyone goes thought that, you grow up being what ever your parents told you to be. Then you start to realize that that’s not who you are, its then up to you to figure out who you really are. I told her that it takes time, many people try being many different things until they find out which one feels right. I’m really not sure where I’m going with this post but there’s just some things I need to say and I find it easier to write how I’m feeling than to say it. This is rather cathartic (thanks Darcy) for me. I can’t over emphasize how odd of a friendship it is with these girls. I also cant state it strongly enough that there is nothing romantic with them. And that’s saying something when I’m not interested in a girl, cause damn I generally fall in love with ever girl that’s willing to give me the time of day. Wow that’s pretty sad. I’m looking at this in a few ways, one is still the simple playing of basketball because I need the exercise. There is also this friendship, which by having none of the usual sexual distractions is giving me new insight into the world of women. It’s sort of like researching history. By studying younger girls I might be able to piece together what is going on in the mind of women my age. Then there is the trying to make a difference in the life of a young person aspect. Which goes hand in hand with another aspect, which is that my co-worker keeps telling me that I would be a great social worker, she says I have great EQ. I’m not so sure about all of that, but this might be a sort of trial by fire to see if I have any interest in such work. I will also say that while I become concerned about helping friends with problems I’m not sure that I want to deal with the problems of others on a regular basis. That and I know that an important part of an effective social worker is being able to clearly define what is work and what is not, and never take your work home with you. This has not been the case for me, these are my friends and after hearing some of the things they had told me I did not sleep for several days, even when I did sleep I could not stop thinking about them and what I could do to help. Maybe in a professional environment it would be different and I would be able to go home and not think about the clients, but this is not a professional environment that I am in and I can’t just leave and not think about it. I don’t think that I want to be a social worker; I had never even considered it until my co-worker said I would make a good one. I don’t think it’s a job for me, but then again I don’t really know what I want to do so I’ll keep it as an option. Well this has been rambling on quite well. I could probably keep going if I wanted to. Oh the last aspect of my friendship with these girls is a fairly critical one to any friendship, they amuse me and I laugh when I’m with them. That and when she looks at me with that great big smile I just feel like I’m doing some little part to make this a better world.