At Least I'm Not Crying in the Bathroom this Time

New Job Post #1:

I've decided that starting a new job is a little like starting a new high school - with less teen angst and better clothing choices. There is meeting your new peers and your superiors, learning where everything is located, what your schedule is like and what your options are for lunch.

Today, my second day of work, I ventured down to the cafeteria at lunch time. It made me think about twelve(!) years ago when I started the 7th grade in a new school district with no friends. Back then, I dreaded lunch time because it always meant severe anxiety. Who was I going to sit with?! What if my lunch isn't cool?! Why doesn't anyone want to be my friend?! Honestly, this terror led me to spend more than a couple lunch hours hiding in the bathroom being miserable with life and wanting the security of my old school and friends back.

Even in college, most of us spent all of freshman year in large groups flocking to the dining hall at meal times. No one wanted to get left behind. If you somehow missed the big group trip, you would frantically IM everyone else on your buddy list to find out if they had already gone too. Then if they had - the horror! The only choice then was to go get something to go and bring it back to your room and your friends (those traitorous group meal thwarters).

It is on days like today when I look back at those memories and really see how (blessedly) far I have come. I still have a tendency to be shy and somewhat awkward around strangers, but I now have the ability to walk confidently into the cafeteria where I know absolutely no one, find myself a seat and eat my lunch with no anxiety whatsoever. Did I really ever care so much? It's hard to believe.

I still don't have any friends though.

I guess my next life lesson should be "Strangers and You: How to Approach Someone Else in the Cafeteria Without Friends and Make them Yours."

finally...halloween pics!

ok, so the three of us dressed up as the girl versions of our three guy friends who threw the party. i definitely lucked out with the best one.

one of my favorite costumes - "show 'em my motto!"

i do an ice luge

kelly and erin take a turn

double your kilt-wearing, nose-ring having, goth make-up fun!

all these places feel like home

i know i said i was going to post pictures of the halloween party and i am, just not right now. sorry.

instead i'm going to talk about my trip to elmira (my alma mater) this past weekend. i went to visit one of my best friends, caryn (i don't know if you read this, but hi anyway), who is in her senior year. plus all the other crazy-ass-dancer-hos that i love and miss. it wasn't a super exciting visit as far as events go, but it was a great weekend with movies, dancing, chilling and even a lunch date with sara. =) excitement is over-rated anyway. i've found that some of the best days are those in which nothing important happens. they give you time to actually stop and realize how lucky you are.

something else i realized while at e.c. this time was that it isn't weird going back there anymore. all the previous times i've visited have resulted in many surreal moments that happen when i'm walking old paths toward my former apartment or the dance studio and i get the feeling as if i haven't left yet, that i still live there. it is a brief second of hallucinatory time travel in a brain that after four years is accustomed to seeing everything as a student, not a visitor. and in all the times i visited before this, i wished these were not just brief moments, but that i were back there. i wanted all my friends still in one place, i wanted the certainty of myself in the world of purple and gold, and most of all, i wanted the comfort of a place that feels like home.

it's not that i don't want some of those things still. (believe me, if i could build a complex that would house all of my favorite people from elmira college and beyond in one place, i would.) but this visit, while it made me miss the people i love and remember the times we had, didn't make me want to be back. instead, there was a peace in being there that i haven't felt before. i was comfortable with being a visitor, and when i left i didn't feel like i was leaving part of my heart behind (as it did so many other times since graduation day). i now realize that things won't ever be the same as they were while i was there, but that i can still enjoy just being where i was always so comfortable, so me. and although it may not be the place i live anymore, it will always be home.

be. it. ever. so.


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