Lonely and Lost

                I have a lot of friends. According to Facebook I have over 200 of them. In reality I have about 20, 15 of which I talk to regularly, and 7 of which I see regularly. It’s harder to keep tabs on everyone when you no longer see them in the hallways nearly everyday and at first that really bothered me. My Circle of Influence had shrunk to about a tenth of what it had been before graduation. The interesting aspect of the phenomenon is that in the months leading to graduation, I wanted out. I wanted to get out of the system and away from all the people within it; rather than enjoying the people I was about to lose, I was negitive and never appreciated how surrounded I was by good people I’d known for years. I miss them. I miss the random lunch conversations and the inside jokes as we pass in the hall, and yet if someone whould have told me a few months ago that, I’d have called themm crazy and probably ranted about all the faults I could see. The faults don’t erase the possitives. They are almost in different planes, ones’ existence does not jeapordize the others’, and yet the more you see one, the less you see the other. There were faults and flaws in everything, but there were also amzing things around me. I put on blinders with a bad attitude, and now I’m overcome by naustalgia.

                So what? High School is over and I’m going to start college soon. We cannot live in the past, but we’re supposed to learn from it, somehow. I haven’t found the key to this and I don’t know that I ever will, but I hope at least I will be able to live with the people I connected with and learn from them as I move forward. Those that I stay in contact with and those that I only knew breifly, each person has affected me. Changed me. Shown me a different way of thinking and acting. And that’s good. Without the friends I have had I couldn’t deal with all the craziness of life. I don’t want to lose anyone else, but they are on a different path that now seperates from mine. It hurts and I try to cling on the the relationship as long as I can but too often not only do I fail to keep it strong, I also make things awkward at the end and that taints all the memories. But letting go is hard and if there’s even the slightest chance that what I do will allow me to hold on to any one of my valued friends, it’s worth a shot, or so I tell myself.

                But if I’ve met so many good people in the last half dozen years in the public school system, think of all the marveous people I’m bound to meet in the next as I move into higher education. The school I have chosen was one I’d always seen myself going to. I fit in there. I practically grew up on the campus. I am moving a whole 2 miles from home to my dorm. I am confortable and secure… at least in theory. I feel like I’m wandering blindly towards a dangerous precipise. One that I have underetimated, thinking it will only be a small bump in the road of life. This year, next month, I will step up to the ledge. I don’t know how to prepare. Should I anticipate an immediate plummet, a gradual decline, or some combination of the two? Should I have a paracute or a rope? Or a flare? I have no clue what I will face, I just know I can’t turn back now. And I don’t want to.

                I want to reach new heights. I want to soar. Yet I fear I will just fall.