home, saccrine home

Secret about me: when I'm at home sometimes I put on my pointe shoes and dance around on my toes.

Home does a lot of crazy things to people.

For one thing, seeing old friends from high school is strange. A lot of them, by now for me, have moved back home and are living here permanently. Some of them are pregnant. A good portion of them are in long-term live-in relationships.

In other words, I envision this place and the people here as somehow universally distinct from the culture of William and Mary.

Now, I know this isn't necessarily true, but there are some definitely factual supportive points of evidence.

Case in point: I went out with a group of friends last night to the local bar. Note to everyone: this bar didn't even exist when I was in high school. No bars in fact existed when I was in high school. They were all just tied up in restaurants somewhere. In other words, there is very little social culture here outside of football games and field parties. Now, I went to this bar. I had driven all day. I had no clean clothes. I only went because some friends had wanted to hang out. I had little to no intent to expend any amount of energy impressing people, but as soon as I walked through the door the scene crept up on me like a strange beast.

It was hard not to feel judged. Everyone's hair was perfect. Lots of make-up. Cute clothes. Hanging out in their same high school groups. For those who don't know, high school was a strange time for me. I was friends with the "popular" crowd for a while, but things changed. I had grown up with a lot of them because we all lived in town, so high school started out with all of us mostly in a pretty tight-knit group. I am not going to try to pinpoint why, because it isn't really important, but for whatever reason, sometime during sophomore/junior years, my group of friends shifted pretty significantly. I was at odds with a lot of my old friends for a pretty good stretch of time. I hung out with the other governor's school kids who are all very cool, very smart, very eccentric people. Since college, I've patched up my friendships with a lot of people. Being at odds is never good, and since I'm hardly ever home, holding grudges doesn't make sense. Knowing these things, you can imagine that standing in the center of the bar was a strange emotion. I don't really fit in to any of the groups of people. I'm not ever home and I'm really okay with that. A stereotype people had about me earlier in my life was that I was really stuck up, but that's not true. Far from true. I just don't feel included, most of the time. I'm not particularly shy, but I feel really overwhelmed in such social situations. And I felt, for just a second, inadequate. I was not making a positive impression on anyone. Suddenly I realized, as I was talking with a friend, there was a really significant point in all of this.

It was made best by some other guy who I can't remember who said something like "You'll feel better about what people think about you when you realize they don't." It's so true. Later that night as I was talking to someone who definitely knew me back in high school, he couldn't even remember my last name or who I was, even when I told him. Sure, I've changed a lot since then, but not that much, really. It dawned on me. I am too cool to let what any of those people think about me matter. The same applied to everyone in that damn bar. All of us who have moved away from home have our own lives, our own circles of friends, and our own successes. We don't need to be validated by a bunch of people we went to high school with. Still, it is hard, sometimes, not to get caught up in the nonsense.

Later, though, I hung out with a bunch of people who are all, honestly, amazing. I was trembling with delight from how much fun it was just to sit surrounded by them for a few hours. I stayed up way too late, though, and am now paying for it with a sore throat and no voice. Speaking of which, it's time for me to take care of that.