Time Lens
So, I have been really busy! I am continuing to pack, clean and do all the little things that it takes to move: canceling accounts, transferring accounts. All that fun stuff!
I have also found the time to reconnect with old friends! Someone mentioned seeing one of my friends on MySpace and it took off from there. Slowly reconnecting and sharing pictures with old friends! Which is always fun! It is a bummer that I have managed to reconnect just before I am leaving the state! I kind of wish I could figure out a time to go up to Marin and see everyone!
It amazes me how much has changed but also how much seems to have stayed the same! People are still friends with and connected with the same people from grammar, middle and high school. I fell off the face of the earth in the middle of high school while I was trying to deal with my depression and I somehow never reconnected into my peer group. It was weird to go from being in honor classes with the same group of 30 people I had been used to associating with most of my life to suddenly not sharing classes with any of my friends because I longer qualified for the honors classes. It had an odd, alienation effect on me.
I guess I was just so eager to get a fresh start in college once I had some control over my illness I didn't look back very much. College was tough to get through anyway! The nice thing is that everyone was older, Psych 101 was a mandatory requirement and people had a better understanding of chronic mental illness. I got to introduce myself as a person with an illness under control and they never knew me "without" the illness. No one who I met in college had seen me fall out of my academic & peer group in high school. No one was as tough on me in college as I had been on myself in high school.
It is nice to know that the alienation I felt really came from my own insecurities and not from my friends. I think I was far harder on myself than I realized. I was so angry things didn't work out according to plan I just assumed everyone else would feel the same way and judge me as if I had fallen short of target. I made that my reality and I hurt myself with it. My friends didn't do it, I did!
Anyway.....it is nice to find old friends!
All of this reminds me of when I studied "Great Expectations" and we discussed in class the "time lens" that the narrator was looking through. As adults we can look back on experience we had when we were younger and we bring a greater knowledge to the experience than we had access to at the time. It is more than the old saying that hindsight is 20/20. It is literally that as an older person with more experience, there are more shades of gray, more nuances and everything isn't quite so big and dramatic to me as it was then.
I have also found the time to reconnect with old friends! Someone mentioned seeing one of my friends on MySpace and it took off from there. Slowly reconnecting and sharing pictures with old friends! Which is always fun! It is a bummer that I have managed to reconnect just before I am leaving the state! I kind of wish I could figure out a time to go up to Marin and see everyone!
It amazes me how much has changed but also how much seems to have stayed the same! People are still friends with and connected with the same people from grammar, middle and high school. I fell off the face of the earth in the middle of high school while I was trying to deal with my depression and I somehow never reconnected into my peer group. It was weird to go from being in honor classes with the same group of 30 people I had been used to associating with most of my life to suddenly not sharing classes with any of my friends because I longer qualified for the honors classes. It had an odd, alienation effect on me.
I guess I was just so eager to get a fresh start in college once I had some control over my illness I didn't look back very much. College was tough to get through anyway! The nice thing is that everyone was older, Psych 101 was a mandatory requirement and people had a better understanding of chronic mental illness. I got to introduce myself as a person with an illness under control and they never knew me "without" the illness. No one who I met in college had seen me fall out of my academic & peer group in high school. No one was as tough on me in college as I had been on myself in high school.
It is nice to know that the alienation I felt really came from my own insecurities and not from my friends. I think I was far harder on myself than I realized. I was so angry things didn't work out according to plan I just assumed everyone else would feel the same way and judge me as if I had fallen short of target. I made that my reality and I hurt myself with it. My friends didn't do it, I did!
Anyway.....it is nice to find old friends!
All of this reminds me of when I studied "Great Expectations" and we discussed in class the "time lens" that the narrator was looking through. As adults we can look back on experience we had when we were younger and we bring a greater knowledge to the experience than we had access to at the time. It is more than the old saying that hindsight is 20/20. It is literally that as an older person with more experience, there are more shades of gray, more nuances and everything isn't quite so big and dramatic to me as it was then.