Wishing

My first two years of high school are not ones that I look back on with particularly fond memories. I spent a lot of my time lashing out at family members and potential friends - anyone who tried to get close to me instead received dark, sarcastic comments and a cold shoulder. I did not think very highly of the people in my life, and it was hard for me to trust anyone. Instead of letting people know how I was feeling, I'd keep my emotions to myself, expressing my thoughts only in writing.

I applied to the Mountain School because I hated living like that. I hated being angry all of the time. I wanted to go somewhere that I could have an impact and make a difference on the environment and people around me. The semester I spent at TMS was the first time in years that I had felt needed; I wasn't just there to take up space. More importantly, however, I learned that I needed other people. When a semester program brings together 45 students and forces them to live and work in such close quarters, it's impossible not to get to know them. I was not able to shut people out in the same way that I had been doing since middle school. I was forced to let my guard down and get to know you guys through speeches in English class, humbles, and group activities during work periods or on Saturday nights. Some of the discussions I had felt terrifying. I loved that I was around so many people who were genuinely interested in having legitimate conversations and who were still interested in talking to me even if I might have (knowingly or unknowingly) pushed them away at first (and if I did, I'm sorry). Over the course of those 4 months, I realized that asking for help isn't always a sign of being weak or childish, and that good friends are there to listen no matter what the situation.

I was able to bring this new, positive attitude home from TMS with me and have a fairly good senior year. But then college happened. Overwhelmed by the number of people arriving for orientation, I made very little effort to reach out and get to know anyone. For the past two years, I've been slowly falling back into my pessimistic, pre-TMS attitude, and I'm finding that I'm unable to talk to anyone here about what that feels like. Students at my school approach interpersonal interactions with the mindset that there's no use talking about their own stress to their friends since these 'friends' are likely trying to silently deal with their own issues and won't want to take on someone else's. No one talks about anything personal while it is going on - I've had friends confess to crying for hours on the floors of their rooms... but these admissions come months after the event's actual occurrence. For some reason, students at my school are not able to form true friendships with each other; even though they can list people whom they think of as friends, they still have no one to go to in times of crisis. 

Don't get me wrong - I am happy with my choice of college. I'm just really frustrated by the fact that I do not have anyone to talk to about the things that happen in my life. Anything I say to my "friends" gets blown off; if it's a happy event, I get a "good for you" and then the topic of conversation changes. A sad event receives a shrug, a "sorry," and an "I don't know what you can do."After the attacks in Boston on Monday, everyone I talked to only wanted to talk about themselves and their own feelings about the event - no one directly asked anyone else how they were feeling. And thus, three days later, I am still feeling extremely stressed out and haven't worked up the nerve to talk to anyone about it because I feel as if it's a silly thing to still be thinking about. I try so hard to reach out and talk to the freshmen that I know in order to make sure that they are not too overwhelmed by life at this school, especially since we are getting to the end of the semester, and a lot of them have taken me up on my offer to have a real conversation about their lives. It's amazing what an intimate conversation can do for one's feelings of self-worth and emotional stability. This sounds selfish, but I just wish that someone at my school would reach out and do the same for me. There's so much that I want to talk about... and no one seems to notice or care. I don't want to go back to being the person I was during my freshman and sophomore years of high school, but my bottled-up emotions tell me that it's happening. I know that I don't have to feel this way, but each day it becomes harder and harder to trust and depend on my "friends,"especially because they don't seem to see me as a person that can reciprocate.

This post has gotten really long and I think I've rambling, but ultimately I want to let you all know that I've been thinking about you a lot recently. Remember to reach out to your on-campus friends to make sure that they're doing okay. I bet they'd really appreciate it.