Someone will feel undervalued because I'm saying this. Someone is going to feel that I don't appreciate them and their presence in my life. Someone is going to be convinced that this means they aren't important to me.
Someone will be angry, because they will feel that it is my own damn fault. It probably is my own fault. I'm a terrible long-distance friend. I'm often bad at returning phone calls, keeping phone/Skype dates, or even responding to text messages.
Someone will feel guilty, because they will think it's their fault. Someone will be certain that this is directed at them, and that they have failed me in some way.
Someone will attribute this to dramatics. Someone will assume that I am under a lot of stress, or that I'm just having a bad night, or that I'm merely homesick.
-SO-
I recognize how fortunate I am. I recognize my privilege, and furthermore, I recognize how many wonderful and supportive people I have in my life. I understand that I am loved, and that I have a lot to be thankful for.
I also recognize my own shortcomings, including, but not limited to, my flakiness, my chronic tardiness, my awkwardness, my impatience, my PROCRASTINATION, and that I sometimes say shit that seems a little bit...unfiltered.
This is not because I feel neglected, or because it's been a rough day (it most assuredly has not), or because I've been watching some sad movie or listening to sad music or thinking about sad things. Perhaps I am being dramatic, or jumping to extremes, but I've been putting off writing this for a long, long time.
-NOW-
I moved to Seattle a little over 8 months ago. I got to come up here with my partner and my dog, and I had a handful of friends and family already here who were happy to help me transition and get comfortable (some of whom I STILL haven't seen -see flakiness/chronic tardiness/procrastination). I pretty quickly launched into school mode, and have scraped my way through decently thus far.
Between the move and the college experience, I have begun learning a lot about myself and how I handle certain types of challenges. The things I have learned at this point are almost all positive, and I have a whole boatload of plans for my future that I didn't anticipate making, and I'm excited about all of it. And that's neat.
I've also met a whole bunch of really great people, most of whom I have great affection for. I've gotten to spend some great time with some people who I already knew, and who I am pleased to discover are on my wavelength in a bigger way than I knew before coming here. I have some friendships that are blossoming, and it's really exciting.
However, I've never been in a place for as long as I've been here without feeling like I've found MY PEOPLE. That's not to say I don't have PEOPLE here, because I totally fucking do, but I don't have that PERSON or those PEOPLE who I'm enough in line with that we just hang out for no reason and know everything that happens in each other's lives every day.
I also feel a big, fat distance between me and many of my pre-Cornish friends. I'm sort of in flux right now. I'm caught between being Junior in college and being 27 years old. I don't really go to parties, so I don't participate in a lot of standard college group activities. However, I'm pretty out of touch with the daily happenings in my outside friends' lives, too. I've gotten to the point where I'm, embarrassingly, jealous of my friends' friendships with other people. Even more embarrassing is that this feeling began well before I moved to Washington; in fact, it began before I decided where I was going to school.
This is perpetuated by a personal hang-up, because I've become so paralyzed with the fear that I'm going to inconvenience people or overstay my welcome with them by wanting to talk to them or hang out with them. Many of my friends outside of Cornish have a LOT going on right now between work and children and traveling and life, and I'm terrified of being one more thing they have to worry about, or being an annoyance. Meanwhile, I've somehow become a person who is so afraid of the rejection of her peers that she's unable to ask people to hang out with her 90% of the time.
The point of all this is to say that I'm lonely in a more persistent and perpetual way than I've ever felt lonely before.
Logically speaking, I feel like an idiot for feeling so lonely and isolated all the time, because I know, in my brain, that I'm surrounded by wonderful humans all the time, and that a metric fuck-ton of people I care about are just a phone call or text or email away. I'm starting to sincerely worry, though, that as I've been learning all of these other very useful things about myself, I've somehow forgotten how to actually, honestly connect with anyone for more than just a moment at a time.
