The Fakers

They are an ubiquitous presence in our society.

You see them everywhere you go, lurking in the corner, waiting to pounce on you, and most importantly, the company you can affort to dispense like a machine that works on automatic function. They display the sort of hungriness akin to that of a watchful predator.

However, they mostly come to breathing life form in a school, with its trademark cliquey high school students.

I've seen enough of them in my lifetime.

They seek you out like a temporary dispenser when they are alone, seeking companionship in their most solitary moments. The next minute, at shot-gun speed, the moment their friends materialize, they disappear as quickly as they appear.

Far more than saying I despise them, I've always had an awed sense of admiration at the mechanisms of these 'predators'.

How do they do it? I ask myself mentally. How can they so easily gain closeness to someone they've hardly or seldom spoken to? And act like he or she is their new best friend.

How can such superficial display of closeness puts one's heart at peace and ease, knowing very well they are intruding into unrequired territories, encroaching other people's privacies?

My most deeply-seated impression of a 'faker' was in Secondary 2.

The 'victim' was my very close friend.

The 'predator' was a girl whom I hated. Whenever her friend didn't came, she would stick to my friend like an irritating pest. She would disappear the moment her friend came back to class. Since I made my detest towards her relatively known, she made sure to keep out of my way.

Needless to say, I was outraged. How can a living, breathing human being turn on their emotions and feelings like a tap on automatic demand?

Recently, or should I say, right now, I have come face-to-face with another 'faker'.

Her intentions were clear, crystal in fact, from the very beginning.

Someone who didn't even pro-offer a 'Hi' or 'Bye', suddenly came up to me, friendly and all, smiles and all, wanting to be friends with me.

Her intentions became even more obvious, when I found out later that she had gotten into some kind of conflicts with her clique.

I started thinking back about the very first time she approached me.

She started with, "I've been classmates with you for 3 years now, and I've never spoken more than 10 sentences to you." (Intention Made Known No. 1)

(For the note, that wasn't true at all, and I highlighted it out to her that I've been group mates with her for twice now; of course, I deliberately left out the fact that we weren't on good terms and I constantly allowed my dislike for her to surface in a in-yer-face fashion)

I replied something along the lines of how weird it was that people used "10 sentences" to describe the clog in conversation flow between themselves and others, as I vividly remembered a classmate using that exact same phrase on another fellow classmate.

Well, I remembered another friend butting in, "There are surely some people in the class that you don't talk (much) to."

She retorted, "But I don't wish it for things to turn out like this between us." (Intention Made Very Known No. 2)

Of course, as my friends know, my brain works at the speed of a turtle, and I didn't catch any current of underlying meaning then. But, on retrospect, I realized it was her way of wanting to build up a friendship with me...and fast, so that she could have someone to hang out with.

The moment I knew her intention, I withdrew...and fast, like a turtle shrinking its head back into its shell. I didn't appreciate people treating me like a friendship dispenser, oh, press a button and here I come running to be your friend! And, if you don't need our 'friendship', you can just throw it away like a used tissue paper that you have just used to wipe your smelly ass.

Of course, for me to put up a pretense similar to the charade that she is parading, would be SO MUCH EASIER (trust me) than having to repeat similar thoughts such as "That bitch, just using me..."

It would make my life so much easier, but somehow, I can't shrug of such frivolous, valiant attempts targeted at building up a fake 'friendship'.

Such resistance to accept anything other than honesty in a friendship has often got my brain entangled in a bundle of live wires, a knot of nerves...I don't think I can ever undo that mess, because it just discounts the true meaning of friendship, in my opinion.