Meh.

Making the most of what I have left...

It's what I live by. But I find that concept irritating to think about.

Gah. I've still got a long way ahead too, but stupid senior year makes it seem like it's going to end already. Which in some ways probably will, come to think of it. :/

Sometimes I wonder what life would've been like if I'd gone to Dwyer in 8th instead of decide to stick with HCS another year. Life really would in some ways be different. I'd actually be in the running for 2nd, for one thing. Hehe.

I'm rather envious of the others who were also in my position but managed to get out of it somehow a lot quicker. Then again, a few of them in particular were more out there to begin with... One in particular.

It's kind of weird. We haven't talked since last May (and that came off kind of awkwardly...), but he and the rest of the crew still turn up in my dreams sometimes. As if all of us were still best friends after all this time. Of course, looking at us now... not so much. We haven't actually been together as the whole group again since sophomore year, and that was only a one-time thing. I should've hosted it at my house like I said I was going to.

What I've really been longing for all these years... Is just that. Another tight knit group where everybody in it really knows everybody in it. It's why I have trouble managing the concept of existing in multiple cliques at one time. It's why I get jealous seeing my own friends with other friends... and wanting to be that good friend of their friends too. It's why I get mad when Peter disses the people he himself used to hang out with like they'd been mortal enemies all along, because those people were my friends, too. It's why I can't stand the thought of meeting up with someone I used to be like that with and now rubbing it off as another awkward moment.

I've been missing our original group all throughout high school... and see what happened to us in the long run. We hardly talk anymore, except in our own little mini-circles, or else just to reminisce for a little bit and then move back to our own individual little lives in the long due process of time.

I suppose my real reason for fearing life after high school is because I don't want what happened with us to happen again with my current friends, even though I knew back in 8th grade that what's happened now had been bound to happen at the time. I just wasn't ready to accept the consequences of it... and still am not.

I never really was good at keeping in touch in the first place.

I just wish I'd met everyone I know now sooner. And talked more to the ones that I did. People like Mike, Carol, Laura, David, etc... that I've known since freshman year, and yet hardly really said or did much with until this year, or in some cases still have yet to do much. Why this year. Why not the beginning of last year, when I'd actually resolved to get this over with and had the extra free time to do so? After that little stint at the end of sophomore year (Relay for Life, Michaela's farewell bonfire, Laura's pool party, and watching movies at Saumin's place) I was hopeful that I could start something up again, having gone through the past two years suffering from my sudden plunge from what social life I had in 8th grade to nearly nothing. But then something went wrong the following year. I can't really explain what, though.

At the time, I blamed it on my schedule. It separated me from a lot of the people I wanted to associate with, but at the same time, I still didn't really talk with them much outside of school yet for some reason. The same went with the people in my classes. I just developed a routine of staying in the library during 5th and 6th everyday in case there happened to be people I could talk to, or else get a ride from school with someone before walking home on my own. Then nap, hw, computer, sleep. Rinse and repeat. Getting my license didn't factor much into it because my parents wouldn't let me drive to school until May, a good 6 months after the fact, partly because the school wouldn't issue me a parking permit, and parking on the street didn't sound like a good idea. So life went on. I'd still talk with people, but for that time I felt somehow satisfied enough with merely interacting with them on an academic level/at school. Hence, all that helping people with physics business. But when it came to stuff outside of school, no one ever really talked to me about that, apart from Peter, but he usually was busy with other stuff like Japanese school.

Flash forward to near the end of May, about the time of prom, when I finally realized that the year was almost over already and that somehow, I'd missed out on something. Looking back at the time, I was actually more upset over my lost potential with academic stuff the night of prom due to some other issues, but soon afterwards, having heard about prom itself and seeing the pictures, I started feeling a little uptight inside about this current issue. I remember talking about it to some extent with Harrison at the time because we were at his house doing the Spanish video, but that was it for a while.

Then came the day of that graduation ceremony. Right after they threw those caps in the air and we all rushed in to meet with the graduating seniors and take pictures, I realized at that moment that I hadn't really done or associated well enough with the people I was looking at even though I'd been seeing them around over the course of the year. When they all started taking group pictures, I sort of backed out and let them do their thing. It was nice watching them (Beatrice's #1 balloon kept smacking people, hahaha), but at the same time I felt kind of... foreign, like an observer to the scene. I actually wound up in one picture because Duy yelled at me to get in one with Beatrice as "next year's valedictorian," which I denied outrightly but wound up in anyway. Come to think, I never saw what became of that picture. And afterwards, I saw everyone go off in their own directions (Philip drove Kevin Mai and Candice off in the car next to mine), and I drove home by myself, lost in my own thoughts as usual.

I made a strengthened resolve around that time to really open up and start actually trying to get on an out-of-school talking basis with more of the people around me, which has basically defined what my life's outlook has been like up until now. I've finally gone out and started doing stuff... but whenever I do something like of that sort, I always somehow wind up thinking about what I haven't done the last three years.

Carol told me before that part of the reason why I'm more active now is because the "loud" people are gone, but looking back on it, I wasn't even there when the loud people were there to begin with. Look at all of the pictures of my friends that are out there. Prior to this year, the only one that I was in was that one picture with Alex, David, and Jenny from Relay for Life. The only other event that comes to mind is Physics Fun Day... I was with Anthony most of that day, but somehow he has pictures of himself from then and I don't, and we even had to leave at the same time. Duy remarked last summer that the dinner at that one restaurant was the first time I'd "hung out" with him, but I'd been talking to him for two years by that point.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I'm just mad that I can't get over this issue now. The more I associate with people, the more depressed I get about what I've done (or rather, haven't done) over the past three years. And trying fit in more isn't going to change that.

And so, when I say that I feel like I'm trying to make up this year for the past three years, and when I seem to go out of my way to do stuff with people at my own expense... I'm fucking serious about it. For a reason.