by then its you I can do without

This is not going to be a very nice entry.  I mean, my attitude and thoughts and feelings are not exactly nice these days.  But this weekend I turned a corner.  While these thoughts and feelings are still basically the same, I’m fine with them and actually happier in some ways.

I’ve been complaining lately about how lonely I am.  I don’t have friends here and don’t connect with people here.  I wrote last week that I felt the only thing I have in common with people around here is our faith.  Especially after the dinner with Julia and Jill.  The whole evening made me realise two things.  While I like Jill well enough, we don’t have much in common and the lack of shared interests can sometimes limit our conversation.  Sometimes being so diametrically opposite from another person can be interesting and spark good conversations, but that doesn’t seem to happen with Jill.  I think Sarah would call her boring and with no personality.  I’m not sure that’s fair, but I can understand why Sarah would think that.  Julia, on the other hand, I like less and less the more I get to know her.  She’s not a bad person, exactly.  She’s just the type of person that can really grate my nerves.  In a phrase, she is a ray of sunshine in a tiny package.  She’s always got a huge smile on her face and has that bubbly personality that makes my head ache and skin crawl.  There’s a part of me that wonders if she’s always being honest.  Things can’t be that wonderful and perfect every time.  She gushed over Jill’s apartment.  But she also gushed over Mary’s house and my apartment as well.  Its one thing to say "Nice place" but it feels like she overdoes it.  And I’m just not that happy all the time.  But she’s also been extremely cold at moments.  I was talking to her and Jill about a situation in my church.  It was girl talk type talk.  Girl talk does not require solutions or fixes, although advice and guesswork is absolutely permitted.  I didn’t want a solution, and I wasn’t even seeking advice.  I just wanted to talk it out with some other people.  Her suggestion was that I talk this over with my mentor.  In my head, I kept hearing a quote from West Wing: "I have utterly no idea what you’re talking about. Please, God, don’t ask for my input."  It made me feel unimportant and unwanted and even unneeded.  I let it go and didn’t make a thing out of it, but it annoyed me and clearly has stuck with me.

This all got me thinking about this place and community and everything else.  The seminary pushes community.  Not encourage, not supports, pushes.  I’m here to get knowledge and an education.  Not make life-long friends.  If I make some in the process, great!  But I’m not sinking into student loans for the first time in my life to make friends.  Back in the fall, when I talked with Mary and the shrink about my psych exam, both told me I needed to create a support system.  I needed to make close friends here in this area.  They seemed to suggest that my other friends wouldn’t be enough.  My support system is made up of the people I trust most closely, not the people who live the closest.  They literally stretch from New York to California to Arizona.  If I were to call any of them at any time, I know they would do everything in their power to help me.  And if that is what is happening and that’s how bad things are, the best thing they can do for me is call the cops and have me checked into a psych ward.  I trust those people to do that for me.  I also trust those people to know when a phone call is just a phone call.  Or just a bad mood is just a bad mood.  Not everything is life and death.  Not everything will make me suicidal.  Sometimes I’m just really sad, or really happy.  And sometimes I need real help.  A girl who happens to be in my program and lives close by isn’t going to understand that.  And I wouldn’t trust her to understand that.  A support system isn’t created overnight, which is what Mary and this shrink wanted for me.  My support system has worked just fine.  Do you know how I know?  I’m still alive.  Yes, its still being adjusted and people are taken on and off the list as our relationships shift with them.  Its not a static system.  But its not a manufactured system either.

I’ve realized the implication to Mary saying I need a support system (which she did again this semester) is that my friends aren’t good enough.  Maybe its overreaching, but thats what it feels like.  My friends are good for me.  If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be my friends.  Simple as that.  Like I said to Heather over Christmas, I’m past the point of inviting people to my parties because I feel I have to.  I only invite the people I want there.  If I don’t want them there, I wouldn’t invite them.

So as my parents keep pointing out, I’m not going to stay here.  I’m not going to settle down in this area and raise a family.  Its not what I want.  Now, I don’t know exactly where I do want to settle down, but I know I don’t want it to be here.  I don’t ft in here and I don’t want to.  The lesson my father taught me about loving and liking people resounds in me and I’m starting to really see its benefits.  Do I love Julia?  With sisterly Christian love, of course I do.  I do not wish her harm or pain.  But I don’t have to like her.  Does this mean I’m rude to her?  Course not!  But this does mean I don’t invite her over for a beer on Friday or dinner on Sunday.  I don’t tell her my darkest secrets or innermost feelings.  That part of me is saved for friends, for people I like.  And that’s okay.

I’m not going to stay here and lay down roots.  So I’m going to stop trying to make this my community so much.  I’m going to reach out to those who actually care for me, whom I actually care for.  My friends on OD, my WoW friends, Small Brain Oboes, college and high school friends I am still close to.  I’m not friendless or pathetic.  Well, maybe a little pathetic.  But I’m not friendless.  I have friends, and I have a support system.  So I’m going to stop pushing them aside to make room for people I don’t like.

This realisation has changed my outlook on school and my purpose for being here.  I have immense resources at my disposal with the library and institute here.  So I’m going to use them and bide my time.  Drain that school dry for everything it can give me.  If I make a friend along the way, excellent.  If I make two, even better.  And if not, that’s okay too.  This was the attitude I had in high school and in college.  I don’t know why or how everything changed when I came out here, but it did.  And now I’m changing back.  If that makes me a New York bitch, well, I have news for everyone.  I am a New York bitch.  Love me or leave me!

We saw the western coast
I saw the hospital
Nursed the shoreline like a wound
Reports of lover’s tryst
Were neither clear nor descript
We kept it safe and slow
The quiet things that no one ever knows

So keep the blood in your head
And keep your feet on the ground
If today’s the day it gets tired
Today’s the day we drop out
Gave up my body and bed
All for an empty hotel
Wasting words on lower cases and capitals

I contemplate the day we wed
Your friends are boring me to death
Your veil is ruined in the rain
By then it’s you I can do without
There’s nothing new to talk about
And though our kids are blessed
Their parents let them shoulder all the blame

So keep the blood in your head
And keep your feet on the ground
If today’s the day it gets tired
Today’s the day we drop out
Gave up my body and bed
All for an empty hotel
Wasting words on lower cases and capitals

I lie for only you
And I lie well
Hallelu

So keep the blood in your head
And keep your feet on the ground
Today’s the day it gets tired
Today’s the day we drop out
Gave up my body and bed
All for an empty hotel
Wasting words on lower cases and capitals 

The Quiet Things No One Ever Knows ~ Brand New