Stunted.

The people I’ve trained with, a random group of people in random stages of their lives, all look to me for some reason, and for different ways. Older guy–fifties–always invites me to hang out with him over lunch, and I don’t know why. Deaf guy with all his sheltered upbringing constantly wonders what I’m doing with the most annoying, "So I see you wiped your nose. Are you congested? Or are you watching a sad clip on your phone?" 

One of the guys from Oklahoma calls everyone else by my name on accident, says he knows a guy in New York that acts exactly like me. He says he feels like he’s known me his whole life.

In the past five weeks I’ve heard that four times. In fact, one of my instructors knows a fourth cousin of mine (so that doesn’t count, I guess).

Most people I get close to–and this has been a running theme my whole life–tells me I remind them of someone else, be it "You look just like my best friend," or, "You’re so easy to talk to, it’s like we’ve known each other for years."

It’s easy to talk about this since it’s a crew full of guys. If it was half and half, Cygnus would probably be wondering if I’m considering cheating on her. But no. I never would. It just blows my mind.

It’s also a coin with two sides. The moment I do or say something their "best friend" of years would never do or say, or the moment I break character for who they think I am supposed to be due to assumptions, I’ve stabbed them in the back. They don’t even know me, but they’ve decided to trust me based entirely off a relationship they shared with someone else–experiences gained, triggers created, hardships endured–while I’ve experienced none of them.

Two days ago, in class, I realized I had stopped respecting one of the guys in the crew. It didn’t start off as that kind of realization, though. It began with, "For some strange reason I don’t think (let’s call him) Dan respects me anymore. I can’t place it." I initially chalked it up to being someone he used to know (to quote Gotye), but then I realized it was the other way around. He can’t write–as in "Groin smash" was written as "grone smasch" while he looked up a video on YouTube, and he kept staring at it as if it was the proper spelling–and he’s obsessed with grainy pictures taken of "aliens" in the sky and all sorts of conspiracy theories. You tell him it’s just a scratch on the lens, he gets very defensive.

And he’s a "wise soul," which means he’s gone through a lot of experiences and, somewhere along the line, decided to put on a cloak of wisdom that isn’t true for everyone, just him. This cloak makes him feel like he knows you better than you do, which was where I devolved into thinking he didn’t respect me.

No. He respects me. He’s still doing the same stuff he did when we first met. The only person’s perspective to change is mine.

They all wanted me to go out drinking last night. After one guy came in hung over four days in a row last week, and another (Dan) spent his whole time making fun–belittling, goading, prodding–someone for not wanting to drink that night (then laughing with another that "ain’t peer pressure great"?), I nixed the plan to see more of Kansas City.

Even though the goading wasn’t directed toward me, even though I don’t regard the hungover guy highly at all, the meanspirited humor toward alcohol wasn’t going to cut it.

Plus they thought they prodded me to go out the first two times. "I know we got you pretty liquored up, but…" And all that time I thought I was doing it out of my own volition. So I called bullshit, pulled the reins, and told them "I’m not feeling it tonight." They tried to convince, whatever, and I said no.

Twenty fucking phone calls later, my night is still fucked because the bitches can’t figure out how to handle me.

When my introversion rears its ugly head, I become violently protective of myself, and it. "I need to recharge" doesn’t make sense to the ringleaders.

Too much time with the broheems. I need some female input in my life.

And that’s another thing. Of the seven other guys, five would happily cheat on their wives if given a chance. The three of us who don’t smoke, actually, are in respectful married relationships. Other than the deaf guy. His wife seems to hate him and treat him like shit whenever she can. But that’s their business.

But seriously. What the fuck? "You can observe the merchandise, you just can’t buy it," Dan said when we were at Power and Light. "I’m sure as hell going to sample all I can!" Then he makes fun of any woman with an ounce of fat on them. He’s easily 225 pounds, wears his clothes untucked and rumpled, and looks like a bum. What. The. Fuck.

Two have already cheated on their wives since being down here. One has an "escort" card that he calls on every six months. I mean, seriously?

But it sounds like I don’t respect them. I do. I respect they have their own personal business, their own personal lives, and that’s fine. What tears me is when they want me to be a part of it because their "best friend" does it all the time. Cool shit, bro. You drop the "ain’t peer pressure great" line again and I’ll punch you in the face. I gave that up in high school.

Also Dan called me an elitist because I wanted to learn the subject material instead of writing down the answers to the test and pass it around. It feels like I’m back in high school. Then when it came to applying the same stuff we learned they were going nuts because they had no idea what the teacher was talking about. Durr. I enable when I’m nice in every other way, but I’m an elitist when I tell Dan no, I didn’t write the answers down for that test and yes, I passed it in my first go-around and no, I’m not stopping to hold his hand through the damned thing.

So yeah. I don’t respect Dan. Everyone else follows him when it comes to making decisions, and his choice is to skate by. This is my career we’re talking about, and I’m dealing with guys stuck in the 11th grade. Fucking grow up.

Okay. I feel better now. Rant over.