personal

Having random (often late-night) conversations about whatever's on your mind. Someone you can talk to. Someone who understands what you're going through - or at least is available and has the energy to try. You realize how much you've taken for granted the ability to find such people within walking distance who are available at that moment because of college. Now you have trouble finding people you can even relate to that well.  You don't have a consistent community to fall back on, and you find yourself scrambling back and forth between different clumps of people who you only see maybe once in a while because of circumstance, and you find that there's only so much you can talk about because your lives have been moving forward so much in between.

But because you've been out trying to follow up with those people, the people who would be nearby and more readily available otherwise but you end up not seeing because you've been busy- they go on regularly hanging out with each other, forming their own cliques locally. And you find that when you do somehow hang out with them, that you're just the outsider, or the third-fifth-seventh-ninth-eleventh wheeler, or the person whose presence complicates things cause it means now all of a sudden we have to add another car when we don't usually have to. And then they start talking about events past or future that you didn't know about in front of you, that you're not sure if it'd be prudent to ask about, and besides, you don't like forcibly inviting yourself to other people's events anyway. And based off of past experience, you don't really know if they would want to see you in the future, considering that the main reason you're hanging out now is just because of a random circumstance or because you asked out of the blue, as usual. (and people don't usually like it when you ask them, "How come you never invite me?" Whether or not there actually is a reason for it.)

And then there comes that admission at a certain point, sometimes, when someone tells you, "Sorry we didn't invite you; we just figured you'd be busy." Or is that just an excuse for something else? How much reading of social cues and mental second guessing and randomly seeing them hang out without you does it take before it becomes too much to handle? Before you just throw your hands up and admit that you just don't fit in with this particular group, even though you don't actually dislike them and may actually enjoy talking to some of them individually? Before it becomes time to just part ways and say, "what's done is done?"

Back about the time when college was ending, one of my biggest fears was losing touch with most of the people I knew. I was about to move to a new area where I didn't know anyone (so I thought- even though it was still in the Bay), and about to live in an apartment by myself for the first time in my life. Ironically, more than a year later, I'm living with other people but about to live alone again in a few months- and now my biggest fear isn't necessarily losing touch with people, but more about what causes it- becoming irrelevant in other people's lives.

Because finding someone to hang out with isn't the hard part. The hard part is finding someone to hang out with that you can actually relate to on a regular basis. And despite knowing a lot of people, I don't know that many people who share the same interests with me- and I feel like the further I pursue those interests (and be myself so to speak), the more I feel disconnected from the people who I do see or run into. It's not that I want to be alone when I go watch a particular movie at a theater or see a musical in SF or go read a book at a coffee shop or eat out at a restaurant and so on- it's just been hard to find someone who's willing to do so with you at that moment, since most of this stuff takes planning in advance, and when I really want to do something I don't let a lack of an available person stop me from doing so. Even though it may make me look "antisocial" if I do it often enough.

That said, lately I've been taking it too far and purposefully finding myself not home or away from people who might normally see me otherwise. I've somehow developed this association with being "ninja Ryan" (as my roommate puts it now), that person who randomly disappears for long periods of time such that no one knows where he is at a given moment. I've become one of those people who looks for excuses to be busy and outside for the sake of being busy. I feel both proud and not proud of it at the same time... and it's not healthy. I don't blame anyone when they accuse me of never being around- I think sometimes I'm just trying to run away from situations that would remind me of how hard it can be to relate to people. But then I end up making those who are looking out worry.

Especially after this past week... where I'd be having a good day, and then I'd randomly run into someone or a group in a situation that would trigger these unhealthy feelings, and then I'd be upset and in a depressive state and unable to focus on anything productive for the rest of the day. And of course I don't want others to see how vulnerable I am, so I'd disappear somewhere or look unsuccessfully for ways to forget it all.

That all said and done, it's a new year, and I'm not about to just let all of this continue to cycle again. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but in light of all these frustrations of the past year, here are a few to start off:

- To not give in to jealousy when I do happen to see people I know hang out without me.
- To not wallow in self-pity when I am alone and doing my own thing.
- To accept myself for who I am, and not worry about trying to fit in all the time.
- To be present and available more with the people I do get the chance to see.
- To set aside the energy and free time needed to work on problems that actually matter.
- To not lament what could have been, but to appreciate what is now and look forward to what will be.

And of course, relevant song from a musical.