Still A Jerk

Hey thur guyz.

I want to post because I'm back at school and I realize it's been way too long since I've written here [or written at all] and I feel very guilty for that.

How are things? Things on my end are pretty alright. I'm back at school like I said and have been since the end of August. Classes are in full swing. Mostly, I just have a lot of reading to do, but I'm a good reader when I actually do it, so that's not so bad.

Money is tight. Old prejudices against certain classmates have not lessened much with time. There are still people I will always wish I was cool enough to talk to, but know I never will. Some of the faces I grew used to seeing, even looked forward to seeing, have disappeared. The coffee is sweeter, the freshmen are intriguing, the classes are less intimidating. I do have more friends than I did before. It's so true what my friend Hannah told me once, that freshmen are at their most vulnerable that they will probably ever be in their lives. I was talking to some friends of mine yesterday and we all agreed- freshmen year was killer. It was difficult and exhausting and scary and just hard. So far this year feels a lot better and I hope to all goodness that it stays that way.

I've been here a bit over a month now, and I'll admit I've had some rough days. I don't know if it's because I have a disorder or if I'm just a lazy scumbag, but sometimes the prospect of a full day ahead of me is just so purely overwhelming. I still sleep a lot, too much. I still do dumb things like don't go to class in favor of napping and drink caffeinated coffee even though I know the effect it's going to have on my mental state, and occasionally allow myself to sleep through church, and spend money on frivolity and do homework in chapel and get by just by the skin of my teeth. I still disagree with a lot of school policies, I still get scared when I work out and I still eat way too much cereal and never enough protein. I still have trouble being honest and even more trouble being terribly friendly. I still think about love too much and sex too much and I still get really confused about all of it.

I think a part of me thought that after last year there would be no one left at this college I would be interested in. Unfortunately that's not quite the case, surprisingly so really, but it doesn't actually honestly matter.

I still have a bad haircut and generally shaky self-esteem and I still would rather invest more time in crap TV shows and the perfecting of my Sims 3 family than on an actual, terrifying relationship. I still have bad days and good days and I still don't know where I'd be without medication and a fairly lax schedule. I still don't write enough and I still think about leaving too much and I still almost never do my laundry. I still just stare at enchanting people instead of talking to them and I still cheat on my pathetic promise to get to the gym at least three times a week. I still write papers just hours before they're due and I still care more about completing my iTunes library than maintaining some sort of stellar GPA.

Basically, I'm still a jerk in all senses of the word.

But I'm trying, truly I am, and overall, I'd like to say I look down a little less when I walk to class and I make a little more effort to get the assigned reading done before class and I'm a little less self-conscious and internalized and a little more smiley and goofy.

And that is progress enough.

Glad to be Home

I'm glad to be home. Don't get me wrong- London was amazing. So much more amazing than I ever could have imagined it would be. It wasn't even really the city so much, but more the people who were with me, that made it so amazing. But that's beside the point. London was incredible, yes. And Houghton was great too. I have enjoyed my months out and about in the world. But finally, ten long months later, I am glad to be home.

I am glad to be back at home, sharing my tiny bedroom in our tiny condominium with my nagging older sister. I'm glad to be home picking her hair snarls out of the drain in the shower. I'm glad to be home doing my laundry in a room that's only two yards from my bedroom, with my favorite laundry detergent, and getting to pick it up whenever I want. I'm glad to be home eating food with salt in it again, drinking Poland Spring Lime flavored seltzer water and Nantucket Nectar Lemonades and eating Greek Salads from the town pizza house with Cape Cod Potato Chips. I'm glad to be back eating dried pasta out of the bag. I'm glad to be able to give myself a pedicure: nail file, nail polish, remover, and Bath and Body Works walnut foot scrub included. I'm glad to be back home catching up on episodes of Glee and watching my roommate's Netflix and listening to Kimbra and Michael Jackson and Kaki King.

I'm glad to be home where we put cream in our coffee and I can go buy cosmetic products at Lush. I'm glad to be home spending nights in my friend's hot tub or around a campfire doing absolutely nothing. I'm glad to be home smelling the smell of wet dog- invading my bed, my blankets, my pillows. I'm glad to be home, following asleep with her curled up under my arm every night. I'm glad to be home doing book inventory for my old high school English teacher, squashing bugs, sleeping without air conditioning, trying to watch So You Think You Can Dance on a TV that doesn't get cable, listening to crap local radio. I'm glad to be home where there's internet access in my bedroom and the sun in Boston beats down on your shoulders and the people are obnoxious and the people are fast and the coffee is plentiful.

I'm glad to be home, where there are always peanut M&M's, but you can never find the hand held phone, and where I can tell you the name of someone who works in every building down the main street. I'm glad to be home where the smell of the salt sea fills the air when it rains and we never run out of coffee mugs and I can hug my best friend and spend all day with him and his freckles and still miss him when I get home. I'm glad to be home where the only thing you can do when you're eighteen is vote and everything closes by 9 and my parents try to impose curfews on me and I'm absolutely dead broke.

I'm just glad to be home.

Freshman Woes

Sitting here on the bed in my new home. My "home" is a college dormitory and it has been my home for two days. Two mornings. Two nights. I am fairly certain I am the only one in her dorm room right now and I don't know why that is the case, nor do I like that it is the case, but it is. I am sitting in my dorm room, entirely alone.

My mother keeps texting me panickedly, reminding me how "special" I am and verifying to make sure that I haven't committed suicide yet.

I spent the greater part of three hours in uncrontrollable, though muffled, tears.

You see for some reason, even though I come from a public high school in Massachusetts, where I have always, without fail, had a best friend, it seems that I no longer possess the social skills required to make friends. No- although everyone else around me seems to have settled into it quite nicely, I am unable to make a single friend worth mentioning.

It has been the most miserable weekend of my life. (Even further humiliating because I'm being such a baby about it. Who have I become? A girl who cries! Because she has no friends! I don't even want to look at myself in the mirror right now...)

Am I socially awkward? I don't think so. There are plenty of socially awkward people here, and they've all seemed to make friends. They run around in socially awkward groups. There are cliques of socially awkward people; the socially awkward people are the ones leaving me out right now. I, who spent the day in my room, under a heap of tissues, wondering if I would ever escape this terrible mess that is currently my life.

I don't know how everyone else managed to make friends so quickly or moreso why I somehow didn't. My sister is a sophomore here, she loves it and has wonderful friends.

I just want to make friends myself.

I want Christian friends, for once in my life. Sweet, funny girls who are firmly rooted in their faith and have high standards for themselves and those close to them. I unfortunately am not skilled at making friends with people who I've never talked to before. I'm not exactly shy, but I'm not open. It takes me a while to feel comfortable with somebody, comfortable enough to be myself. And after today, I don't think I blame these people for not wanting to be my friend. I wouldn't really want to be friends with me either.

I start to question whether I am really this dull? How did I never notice it before? There have been times in my life where I have been convinced that I am charming, funny, totally unique and who wouldn't want to be my friend?

This is not one of those times.

I truly don't remember how I made friends before this.

I truly wonder if I will ever have friends again?