The Beloved, their lifestyle, why I put up with them, and what they mean to me.
I decided to start this splurge with the Beloved, probably because I’m thinking about them quite obsessively as the summer draws to a close, and I get closer to things returning to normal. I’ll see them every morning, in the same place they always are, and almost every single person will have been there last June. (For new readers, the Beloved are explained here).
Their lifestyle… It’s not unusual to have a Beloved come to school in the middle of the week with shiny eyes and hysteric laughs because of some drug. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. There are a couple of them who you only worry about when they aren’t high, because they always are. Sober is their stoned. Drinking parties on weekends, unsupervised at someone’s house or cabin, are not out of the norm. Neither are late-night outings beneath the radar of sleeping parents, or farther-than-“expected” sexual encounters. A group of the Beloved switching lawn ornaments around and rolling trash cans down hills? Sure, that’s to be anticipated. And hearing one of them got a misdemeanor for smoking cigarettes on school grounds, or that their source of income happens to be from re-dealing pot he gets from his fellow freshman/dealer? That’s not really all that strange.
But there’s a brighter side to the Beloved, energy that you don’t find any other place. Having Neko sprint down the hall with a bunny in her shirt? Normal. Having pop-bottle cap fights at 7:15 when you’re half-asleep? Normal. Blowing up the condoms that they use as buffers on the sound booth mikes in the auditorium, walking down the sidewalk with it bouncing in front of you as you pass the elementary school, and singing the scrotum song? Still normal! Annoying the Japanese teacher with giant white-board Gaara drawings, yelling out “p***s!” in the middle of the hall, dying their hair some random shade of color, dressing up on Tuesdays for anime club, getting detentions for sleeping in late (again), raping each other in the hallway, and having poke wars, falling over from hugging each other too hard, running in circles because we’re bored, being obsessed over something shiny, and freaking out over nothing--*takes a deep breath* Yep, all normal. And You don’t find that with anyone else. With what other group of people is it true that you come as you are, every day, looking like s**t or on top of the world, and they surround you, buffer the stress, lift you above the crap? I’ve never heard of anything close to this. Neko said that in her 15 different moves she’s never seen it happen. We’re unique.
Why do I put up with them? So many people have posed that question, myself included. If their lifestyle freaks me out so much, if I hate their drinking-drugging-oversexed exploits, why don’t I just leave them? It’s not that simple, no matter how it must seem. I’m with them and I see them in a way most others don’t. In every beloved there’s a potential that surpasses how they’re living. Every single one of them has this great soul inside of them, these ideas and thoughts that go beyond what you’d expect from a rowdy, rebel teenager. And I guess I think that maybe if I’m with them and beside them as they struggle through this hell called adolescence, I’ll find out what’s so buried in them. What revelations about the world they’ve had in their pot-induced stupors, and why they, like the rest of us pain-filled, melodramatic, love-chasing Beloved, have not simply decided to OD or slit their wrists—God knows we’ve all thought of it. Almost every one of us has reached the ledge, and every one of us has glanced over, turned around, and walked back to solid ground. And at its simplest, it’s raw curiosity that keeps me with them. I want to know why.
What they mean to me? Everything, and they don’t even know it. Without them, I’d have had no reason to get up every morning and drag my pathetic a** to school. No reason not to just be a screwed-up shell. I’d have no reason not to slice myself to shreds, no reason not to jump out of my second-floor window. I’d have no reason not to go OD on a bottle of aspirin or something. And I don’t think they even realize that this weird, mood-swingy, frizzy-haired girl depends on their very existence in the cafeteria before lunch, that if they aren’t there she gets anxious, that if she talks to you and she thinks you’re hiding something, she’ll practically make herself sick wondering what’s wrong, even if it turns out it’s only that you forgot your homework for Math today. I don’t think half of them know that just by seeing their faces I’m stable, and if they say hi to me they make me a few degrees happier. And the hugs? They make me feel like maybe they might actually care as much back. Sometimes I wonder if they’re all pretending, but then I talk, really talk to one of them, and I know at least one of them feels the same way.
They don’t understand it, even when I try to explain. In Saugerties, I could say I had one Good Friend. That was Marie. And the other Friends who were actually friends, not just acquaintances, were the foster kids who lived two doors over. And they both left. They were there at different times, and they both left. And that was all, in eight long years that was all. And sixth and seventh grade? A bit better, but one friend, Keito, was constantly in the other half of the grade, and the other, Ri, was at a different school entirely. So I floated and floundered, until the Core Beloved started forming. It changed a little, refined itself, but it started with the merging of two lunch tables, and some old lingering bond of friendship left over from elementary school.
Manashi, Eiji, Kodomo, Aushy, Koinu, Ben, Erika, Krysta, Sean, Peter, Riley. That was us at the beginning, with all the drama of the last year of middle school… Now, we’re just a little different.
Manashi, Eiji, Kodomo, Koinu, Krysta, and I are still here, but now? Now there’s Tsuki and Neko, Imooto, Tree, even Peder if you want to count him. People we didn’t have before. And that’s just us, the freshman-almost-sophomore “base” of what I call the Beloved. And we all made it, we all survived, we’re all still here, in one way or another, because of someone else in that Core, and somehow there are others, other people who know what we know. No one in the beloved is ever okay. Like I said, it's the pain that brings us together. Because there's some primal instinct in us that knows that they feel it too, somehow, for some reason, and if we can get close enough to them, all of them, it'll go away. Or make sense. Or do something other than hurt. So we reach for it, cling to it, and it gets us through the morning, the class, the lunch period, the day or week or school year. And we come out on top at the other end, because we’re holding them up and they’re holding us up, and if one of us falls we catch them, because if one of us slips we all stumble. It’s just our way of life.
What it all boils down to is this: If you’re a** is dragging, we’ll pull you up, only because it’s easier for us to slap when we’re all on the same level. ^_~
xcrashgirlx Community Member 
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