Friday, April 1, 2011

The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog!

Seems like a good thing won't stay down eh? I've been keeping my little mind blips going now for about 2 weeks, felt I should put some life back into here as well when a sentence or two isn't enough.

I'd like to be serious a moment and talk about a fear of mine, not so much as to seek help for it, but to help people understand me a bit better.
I've always had a problem with abandonment, not on a family level thank god, but on a social level. In my primary school years I had few friends, and while not a social outcast, was still overlooked by most in my class. When I entered secondary school, I rapidly lost contact with them. I remember all the hopeful thoughts and plans I'd made with them, how we'd all live together, probably work together, and be friends forever. A naive hope to believe in and one I understand was ridiculous, but at the time it did sting. Now I wouldn't dub myself socially inept per se, if I'm around a group of people I get on well with I'm very sociable. It's the ability to talk to strangers, or to break into a group I find tough. Honestly when I went to college this year I was a little depressed. Once again my friends would be leaving, we'd all be off in our respective colleges, each doing our own thing on our own time, with less and less space to see each other. The fears of Primary came flooding back and I've worked hard to make sure I'm not left behind again.
I don't really know how to make friends. I look for like-minded people and just sort of do my thing whatever it is. In secondary it worked, netting me a good 4-5 hardcore friends and a small circle of outer friends. With the reorganisation and freedom of 4th year those circles expanded further. Who would've though the boy with two friends lost so quickly would be united with 10 wonderful and amazing friends, with 20-30 others to fall back on, to fill parties with, to have good conversation and to generally fill my day with happiness. But now that I'm college, I realise I've no idea what I did back then that worked so well.
For the first week of college I knew no one, and in UCD, when you've got literally thousands of people passing by you, it's soul crushing. Everyday I would take my lectures, move silently to the next one, dreading any free time I had between. I remember trying woefully to strike up a conversation with a person in one of my lectures, it filled me with fear, were all my social confrontations going to end this way?
In the second week societies started recruiting, I signed up to about 10-15 of them, but as I placed my name down for game soc, I knew at least I'd have people to talk with, somewhere to wait out the time between lectures.
We're about 7 months into it now, and I can say that I'm not as lonely as I went in. I've many people to chat with and enjoy company with in game soc. They're a mixed bunch of interesting people, each bringing something to the social paradigm. But I've realized something. While I enjoy my time with these people, I don't see them as friends, but more the acquaintances you fall back on should you not have a friend about at the time. I came to this conclusion when I realised we were all just too different, we were of varied ages, each on our own timeline and each with our own purpose. I can't talk about my classics lecture to the engineers, I don't understand the problems of the mature students, I could never find time to enjoy hanging out with the ones doing their thesis. These are people I simply rely on to stave off loneliness, but none of them have filled the void that's left when I left secondary school.
I'm not one to think about the future, because quite frankly it scares me. But I know it, down the line I'll lose the friends I hold dear, they'll forget about me, it's only natural I suppose. I just hope it doesn't happen for a while at least, you guys are some of the best people I've met, and I really can't imagine a day where you're just not there.
Please prove me wrong here friends, as you move on in life, just don't forget about me.

Signing off once again,

Alex.

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