I think I've finally cracked...

[Evran]

*Sigh*

Never in my life have I been visited by such a profound sense of personal sadness from any sort of fictional media as I have while watching the anime Eureka seveN.

In brief, non-spoiler fashion, one of the main protagonists, Eureka, is... unique. That is to say, she maintains a substantial amount of difficulty identifying and communicating with others. She is, in a sense, alone in her uniqueness, if you will.

As odd as it may be, I find myself identifying with this, and it has somewhat rocked me.

Where I live, at least the area I live in, the Christian population is basically non-existent. The Church I attend tends to maintain an average age of around 50, and the youth are too busy with matters of the flesh.

The rare Christian person I meet that IS actually around my age bracket, tends to be non-committal and in many ways shallow.

Essentially... It has rocked me so because I have realized that where I am, I am unique. I am alone. While I have known this to be true for a long time now... never has it saddened me so to have that realization. The feeling of being alone yet living around so many people... I know I may only be faltering temporarily, but it is something that seems to be stuck in my mind now.

I am wondering if anyone else has had to deal with similar circumstances, and how you manage/managed?

[Dante]

To be unique doesn't make you alone. To be alone is to be alone, and the greater the number of people around us, the more alone we are. Furthermore, what is perhaps even more disturbing, is that these tend to form behaviors within us, such that even if we were to move to another location where people sought to seek social relationships with us, we may perhaps fall back on our habitual social setup predefined within the social area in which we were originally accustomed, and feel alone even in a place where that need not be the case. Or perhaps not.

All the same. We are not alone in being alone. The guru Wikipedia does not know all, but he/she/it knows much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship

The number and quality of friendships for the average American has been declining since at least 1985, according to a 2006 study.[1] The study states that 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and that the average total number of confidants per person has dropped to 2.

(Of course, Australia is different from the US, but in many ways we are very similiar because we share a western world view (even if Australia is more in the East then the west )

I am lucky I suppose to be forced into social contact with others, individuals I would consider to be friends. All the same, I recognize that I could easily gain more in this smaller setting, but say if I were asked to join someone for lunch or go to a movie, I woul d be the most likely individual to decline.

Instead however, the modern western world is taking on a digital friendship enviroment. For certain, I have more friends online the offline, and the more I gain online, the more I seem to let stall out in real life.

Because of this dwindling set of real life friends I have also come to associate well with anime characters that I saw as loners like Heero Yui of GW, especially when I was younger and school took up all of my time (elliminating my ability to meet up with friends and also resulting in a major switch to a (contraband) online social life).

It appears as though you are new to CAA, I hope you enjoy your stay here and find that an online set of friends can also be enjoyable. I recommend RPing, but that's my personal addiction XP. Real life tends to be too boring.

[Evran]

Thanks for the reply.

I think 'alone' was probably too strong a word to use in my original post. I do have a fair number of friends, but I am the only Christian among them.

I guess really it has come down to the need to have like-minded friends. Not ones that are more concerned with who they are taking to bed any particular night, over their salvation.

I have, up until this point, made the conscious effort to avoid online friends of any sort of meaningful caliber. More than one friend of mine has had fairly crushing experiences with online relationships and such in the past, and that has made me somewhat dubious.

Still, spending the brief amount of time I have reading various forum posts here has built me up already. There are like-minded people out there, even though they may not live in my general vicinity. And that is a good feeling.

*Smile* As you have said, I am new to CAA, and I thank you for your warm welcome. I think I might find to like it here, surrounded by people who share common vision, as well as common interests.

I apologize for the depressing nature of my first post as well, lol. I think I'll go make up for it by making a proper thread in the 'Who's Who' forum.

Thanks again.