The More We Get Together

When I was a kid, I used to watch a show called Kid Songs, which was basically TRL for prepubescents.

The songs were upbeat, playful and optimistic, and, as a young, impressionable child, you couldn't really help but believe everything they were singing, especially when they all looked so happy singing together. I mean, they had a song called "I Like Trucks" and you sang along, even if you had never been in a truck.

Several of these songs still roam around my musical memory, especially one that I heard a lot.

The more we get together, together, together
The more we get together
The happier we'll be
'Cause your friends are my friends
And my friends are your friends
The more we get together
The happier we'll be

The word "together" drills into your mind like a not-so-subliminal message: "Get all your friends together and everyone will be happy!" After all, who doesn't want their friends to like each other? Surely, even those who are convinced their groups wouldn't cohere still wouldn't want these groups to strongly dislike each other. Those who like having different friend groups would prefer these friends to be indifferent to each other and not uncomfortable with each other.

Google+ (which I still insist is underrated) understood that people have different groups of friends and created circles so people can decide what to share with each one. I know this works for some people. I, too, used to think having different groups of friends worked well when you liked everyone equally.

But the thing is, I've never really seen equality of friendship in these situations. People always seem to be more friends with one group than another.

Or jealousy gets in the way. Feelings get hurt. Promises are made only to be broken. People form bonds with some that they don't form with others, and professional and personal interests get in the way of strengthening existing bonds.

It's hard for me to fully articulate what happened to me last year that made me think hard about this topic. It took a while to come to an anticlimactic head, and involved different social settings. All the world's a stage and there were many scenery changes and even costume changes on my part.

A series of events--fortunate and unfortunate, personal and professional--and the people that participated in these events combined and disconnected to form a web that I felt I couldn't unstick myself from. People's attitudes ebbed and flowed, actions were misunderstood, time was spent with some people and not with others, and, as always, things were said to people's faces and behind people's backs.

In the end, the web seemed to kicked me out of its own will. I was left floating aimlessly in the wind, shell shocked and wondering what had happened. Wondering most of all if I should reach out. If it was my job to call or text and make sure things were okay. But did it really matter if no one cared to be reaching out to me?

This is all vaguely poetic, of course, but the feelings I went through while trying to cope when it was all over were real. I still struggle with them, which I try to convince myself is normal.

Sometimes, I wonder if I was selfish in wanting everything to turn out a specific way and trying to talk people into going that way. Then I try to convince myself that I was trying as hard as possible to not be controlling, since "controlling" is never one of the words I want associated with me.

I don't know how much longer all these thoughts will float in and out of my mind. I'll be frying eggs or going through Facebook or taking a shower and the thoughts will just come to me and I'll dwell on them somewhat pathetically.

What I have stopped doing is trying to understand why everything had to happen the way it did. Sometimes, things just don't work out for us and that's the way it is. Our world is messed up that way. The unfair part is how things that fall apart for you fall into place for other people. That's when it hurts.

As much as I thought the theory "the more we get together, the happier we'll be" would come through in the end, it didn't. Groups of people join and dismantle, led by common denominators and uncommon circumstances that get blown out of proportion, and all that's left is dust, texts, hurt, and photos.

There isn't really an enchantment here. Maybe I just haven't found it yet.