Untold Tales by a Whimsical Wallflower

I know that 4 years of college has a lot to do with some of my friends and me growing far apart, and I don’t think it truly is anyone’s fault, but sometimes I feel really sad thinking about it.  I still love them, but I don’t know if they like me anymore.  If I make the effort to talk to them, sometimes I end up feeling rejected because they’re too busy and they don’t have time to talk to me or they just don’t respond to my AIM messages.  And I see them growing farther apart from me every week, growing closer to each other because they’re all just in the same general geographic location. 

I feel rejected, out of the circle, and an outcast at times.  And I don’t think they realize it.  Or I think they think that I actually don’t want to spend time with them.  That’s actually not true.  I just tend to not want to hang out with people who I think only make time for me out of obligation.  I don’t want to feel rejected, so I avoid them to avoid feeling hurt.  I don’t want my friends to be my friends in name only.  I don’t want them to talk to me with their minds halfway across town.  I don’t want them to have a quick lunch with me just because they feel bad that we haven’t hung out in forever. 

I just want our relationship to grow.  I want them to realize that I’ve grown up too, and I’m not the same girl I used to be in high school, always following my friends around, and not caring if I’m being ignored when I talk.  I want them to realize who I am.  I want to be myself.  I want to be able to sing loud and off-key during karaoke without worrying what they think.  I want to be able to take silly pictures with them, to make a fool out of myself when we play DDR, to eat as much as I want when we have lunch and NOT worry about how I look in front of them.

For right now, I feel like an outsider.  They take pictures together, they hang out together, they talk and reveal their opinions to each other.  And they forget that I’m here too. 

At least I’ve made new friends in San Diego as well.  And other new friends who are farther away physically but still occasionally say, “Hi, how are you doing?”  (That’s ALL I ask).  Friends who do not stereotype me as that “quiet girl.”  I’m grateful that I can sing off-key with them and they don’t care (for the most part).  And I still have some old friends out there who have always known that I’m not really THAT quiet, but of course, since we’ve known each other for like FOREVER (*ahem…Wing, Rie, all the rest of you Chatta Monkees), of course I couldn’t hide my weirdness for that long. 

I guess life is like that.  People move on with or without me.  I just wish we could be close again.