blah.

i thought that these feelings of alientation from everyone else were because of graduate school applications. when people ask how i am, i'm torn between giving them a superficial answer, and confessing how overwhelming i find the academics + applications process. i sometimes try to avoid social situations where i have to talk about my life because there isn't much to say. (writing about it, on the other hand, frees me from social expectations about how conversations should go and flow.) but turn the conversation to your life, people, ideas, books, style, food, languages, and i will eagerly acquiesce :).

then suddenly i just thought of what mch asked about the impact of study abroad, and even though i strongly denied it that day, now that i think about it more carefully, i realize that she does have a point. maybe i have been repressing the idea that i changed a little. i was so anxious about coming back, so desperate to pick up the loose threads and just continue weaving away familiar, well worn patterns, that i didn't even reflect on how my emotional relationships with people might have changed. i tried to suppress all uneasy realizations that maybe things weren't completely the same.

but of course they are different. blinded by my wishful insistence that everything was to be the way they were in happy sophomore year, i smoothed out all incongruities and discontinuities. i blamed myself for withdrawing voluntarily. but it was not voluntary at all; in fact, this is normal: one year is a long time to be away - one had to, in that one year, turn to other sources of inspiration and solace. i also grew increasingly dependent on WS. i forget that last year i started easing my emotional dependency off family and friends, displacing it onto him. such is the nature of relationships, when best friend and boyfriend and guardian are united in one dear form.

i really miss everyone... and slow lunches, late night movie sessions, spontaneous visits. senior year is the year everyone is busy with their own things. it's the time when we silently struggle to cope with being a student and the thought of not being a student in the near future, but no one is brave enough to talk about what it really means and how much it scares them. if i could, if you would ask, i would tell you that sometimes i feel like i am just compromising. (life shouldn't be a compromise though! who would ever receive a precious gift, say, a beautiful vase with tiny rose buds etched into its glass, but then put a stock of weeds into it. hmm that is a poor analogy... but you get what i mean.)

this has gone on long enough, but i guess self centeredness is not a crime...