The Second Coming
Many of my friends have begun regular blogging again, and have inspired me to revisit my once-beloved online journal. In the months since school started my LJ has been relegated to a repository for quizzie results but now -trumpets, please- I return! It shall be a mah-velous method of passing time during my three weeks off, and perhaps a more effective method of correspondence and contact with friends than phone and paper. To celebrate, I changed my LJ's appearance and added a new icon. Whoopee!
Although I check my friends' LJs often (especially Alicia's always-amusing rants and revelations about life way out in BFE), I hadn't thought about mine until last night. Paul and I were musing about the first time we met, and consequently the first things we remember of each other. I remembered I'd actually mentioned him in an LJ entry the night we first met-- not by name, of course, only as the cute guy from dance class. I went back to look, and realized how sparse my entries had become, and how I missed journaling of some sort. I suppose quite a few of my entries will be locked as private, but what I can share, I will.
But the conversation with Paul brings me to the true subject of tonight's entry. My first memory of him is of when we met, but his goes back to my first night at SJC. There was a very drunken welcome party for all the new febbies, courtesy of past febbies, at Serena's house. It wasn't much of a party: house too crowded, people drunk beyond funny, very little good conversation. The highlight was, of course, that I had my first beer, but after two bottles I wasn't much interested in drinking anymore and becoming shit-faced like everyone else. I stood around awhile longer, meeting no-one memorable, and then left.
Paul, however, remembers seeing me. No, no, not in wow-she's-beautiful sort of way; I simply stuck out. I'm sure that had a lot to do with my being sober-- but it seemed to him I was aloof and disdainful, disinterested in college antics. As if, I suppose, I had something better to do, and was waiting around until my wasted friends were ready to go home. And he liked that about me.
Of course, I was a little disdainful, but it was more disappointment than anything else. This is what I have to look forward to for the next 4 years? I thought. I also felt out of place-- something that always makes me quiet and withdrawn. It felt it showed, how I didn't belong, how this kind of thing was supposed to make people happy but it just made me depressed. But apparently to Paul (who wasn't drunk either) it seemed like I had it all under control. It reminds me of compliments some friends and acquaintances have given me: that it seems like I've always got my shit together.
Closest friends, and now Paul, know this is not the case. What is this power, that to the world I can appear composed but internally be falling apart? And why don't I realize when I'm using it?? At my worst during Upper year, no-one really noticed a change but my closest friends. I managed to function, even if the school work wasn't of the best quality, and people just assumed Winter term was making me touchy and tired. But at the time, I thought it must have blazed like an advertisement on my forehead: THIS GIRL WANTS TO KILL HERSELF. How did I hide it?
At SJC I'm very open with how I struggle, what I hate and what I have a hard time dealing with; but do people still see me as put-together? I feel like my life is flying by without getting anywhere, and I find the future shapeless and uninviting.
On a different note, another boarding school alum made this point I'm munching on: at prep school, our immediate world was very restricted, with many rules, but the possibilities of life after prep school seemed endless; now at college there are next to no barriers on our lives but suddenly it seems there's nowhere worth going. Perhaps this is just how anyone feels if they've gone to a high school they loved and are now at a college that feels mediocre in comparison. At least I have Bob Saget to cheer me up.
Although I check my friends' LJs often (especially Alicia's always-amusing rants and revelations about life way out in BFE), I hadn't thought about mine until last night. Paul and I were musing about the first time we met, and consequently the first things we remember of each other. I remembered I'd actually mentioned him in an LJ entry the night we first met-- not by name, of course, only as the cute guy from dance class. I went back to look, and realized how sparse my entries had become, and how I missed journaling of some sort. I suppose quite a few of my entries will be locked as private, but what I can share, I will.
But the conversation with Paul brings me to the true subject of tonight's entry. My first memory of him is of when we met, but his goes back to my first night at SJC. There was a very drunken welcome party for all the new febbies, courtesy of past febbies, at Serena's house. It wasn't much of a party: house too crowded, people drunk beyond funny, very little good conversation. The highlight was, of course, that I had my first beer, but after two bottles I wasn't much interested in drinking anymore and becoming shit-faced like everyone else. I stood around awhile longer, meeting no-one memorable, and then left.
Paul, however, remembers seeing me. No, no, not in wow-she's-beautiful sort of way; I simply stuck out. I'm sure that had a lot to do with my being sober-- but it seemed to him I was aloof and disdainful, disinterested in college antics. As if, I suppose, I had something better to do, and was waiting around until my wasted friends were ready to go home. And he liked that about me.
Of course, I was a little disdainful, but it was more disappointment than anything else. This is what I have to look forward to for the next 4 years? I thought. I also felt out of place-- something that always makes me quiet and withdrawn. It felt it showed, how I didn't belong, how this kind of thing was supposed to make people happy but it just made me depressed. But apparently to Paul (who wasn't drunk either) it seemed like I had it all under control. It reminds me of compliments some friends and acquaintances have given me: that it seems like I've always got my shit together.
Closest friends, and now Paul, know this is not the case. What is this power, that to the world I can appear composed but internally be falling apart? And why don't I realize when I'm using it?? At my worst during Upper year, no-one really noticed a change but my closest friends. I managed to function, even if the school work wasn't of the best quality, and people just assumed Winter term was making me touchy and tired. But at the time, I thought it must have blazed like an advertisement on my forehead: THIS GIRL WANTS TO KILL HERSELF. How did I hide it?
At SJC I'm very open with how I struggle, what I hate and what I have a hard time dealing with; but do people still see me as put-together? I feel like my life is flying by without getting anywhere, and I find the future shapeless and uninviting.
On a different note, another boarding school alum made this point I'm munching on: at prep school, our immediate world was very restricted, with many rules, but the possibilities of life after prep school seemed endless; now at college there are next to no barriers on our lives but suddenly it seems there's nowhere worth going. Perhaps this is just how anyone feels if they've gone to a high school they loved and are now at a college that feels mediocre in comparison. At least I have Bob Saget to cheer me up.