I Need a Resurrection

In Australia I had a marvelous opportunity that I finally took advantage of. I had the same opportunity going to high school, and then to college, but what held me back was the family constant. In Australia, I did not have that constant. Confused yet? The opportunity was the chance to rewrite myself, become more of who I wanted to be. Act like who I felt like inside. At home, in junior high, high school, and college I had written myself a long standing reputation of being a loner, antisocial, not needing or wanting millions of friends to hang out with all the time. And now I will be analyzing my life... feel free to ignore as necessary.

In junior high is where it began I think. This is the age when people first change, puberty is often to blame. This is when my best friends forever stopped being my best friends. Granted, they were my best friends by default, we lived near each other and that was that. Our interests separated, I was put in the advanced math class, and we didn't so much drift apart as were ripped apart by the seams. The hole was momentarily filled in junior high, but then the new friends went to a different high school and so I fell out of friendship with most of them as well (save for one dedicated friend, who I should do my damnedest to hang on to).

High school. For the first time in my life I was thrust into the public school system, terrified at the sheer numbers of people everywhere and coming into a class of over 500 knowing about 4. And the 4 I knew were not the good friends I had made in junior high, more just people I knew. So for a time I made one good friend in each class, and a few in my volleyball team. The problem with this strategy is that you don't stay in the same classes with the same people throughout high school. So I made a lot of good one-semester friends. I never really got incredibly close to hardly any of them. It was hard for me, because all of the friendships I had begun to make seemed to all have different groups they belonged to. There were the band friends I made, the choir ones, the honors classes ones, and I was just a drifter. People knew me, but no one would have considered me their best friend. I had someone I considered my best friend, but I never deluded myself into thinking I was hers as well. Which is and was a depressing thought. It seemed like everyone coming from the public middle schools had formed their cliques in middle school, and while there would have been ample room for me to join one, I wasn't sure of myself enough to ingratiate myself to more than one person at a time (generally speaking). So while I had a lot of friends in high school, I didn't do a lot of after-school hanging out with people (except for volleyball 9th and 10th grade and set/crew 11th and 12th grade) because I didn't feel like I knew them well enough and I didn't know enough people from any one group to feel comfortable... and thus my loner reputation (especially within my family and compared to my sisters) increased.

Then, my biggest opportunity to change came around as I headed off to college. Unfortunately, this is also the time when I first got my laptop and discovered the wonders of the internet. Moving in a week early also didn't really help, since it gave me a lot of very alone time to sit around and play my new obsession: runescape! Yes, I was an rs nerd. It made me feel less alone to sit there and chat with people from all over the world while also being entertained by a very simplistic game. And so I started my college life making friends online. My friends live in the internet! And sure, I made friends "for real" as well, including my now roommate who is one of my so-called best friends. But not a lot. Except for my "social" contacts in the internet of course, my college experience has been mostly well, lame. I continued the loner, antisocial stereotype that is Kat C. And while I was okay with it... eventually and occasionally I realized that this isn't how I wanted to live my life, I was okay with it but not happy with it, not enjoying life to the fullest. And it wasn't even that I was less social in order to focus on my schoolwork, nope I was just too busy playing stupid internet games and focusing on my "friends" there. Friends I'd never met and most of whom I never will. And people read this and think, how incredibly sad or lame. And I knew that, and I was ashamed of it, but still I clung to it because making friends in the real world was a lot harder for me. On the internet I could be outgoing and flirty because I knew that if they judged me in a way I didn't like I would never have to deal with them again. It was safe. Right, so then I mimicked my high school career and made semi-friends in all different areas instead of being the smart person and making good friends within my major. And since they were all just semi-friends for the most part, none of them remained on the "friends" classification once I had returned from Australia. It was like everyone was just absent, or I'd see them and it would be the polite conversation you have when you sort of know someone but don't really have any desire to catch up with them. And for some that wasn't true, but it seems like the majority of my friends circle has completely disappeared/changed since returning. And to top it off, those close friends I do still have, have made other close friends in my absence that have served to semi-replace me. Which, is understandable, but still not a wonderful feeling.

All of this has led to the antisocial loner you all see when you see me. Granted, those of you who I knew in Australia may not have seen this side of me (at least to its full extent, I'm sure quite a bit of it leaked out though). I just wish sometimes, no, I won't go there.

I think I need a change, I'm tired of just getting by and slogging through my life. I need to take charge of it and do something with it. I don't know quite what this means yet, but something needs to happen. I think it might turn into me working for a year or two here, living as cheap as I can and sorting out as much of my debt as I can, and just taking off and traveling the world. I need to see the world.

I feel like it's when I was working at McDonald's. I became afraid that if I stayed too long, I'd get sucked into it and never break free. Now though, its not McD's, it's my entire life. I want more, and I'm not trying to offend anyone by saying that, it's just how I've handled my life so far. I want to change it before I get stuck being like this forever. I'm going to do something with my life. I need to.