In Part 2, I talked about how I enjoyed living alone in college.
I also enjoyed the friends I made. I met another girl in electrical engineering and two girls on my floor of the dorm. For a while, I believed that I'd found kindred spirits. "All this time," I thought, "I just had to go somewhere new to find some people who behave the way I think human beings should." Of course, in the back of my mind, a voice told me it couldn't last forever, and that voice is always right. Everyone disappoints me until I develop more realistic expectations of them.
One girl said something kind of twisted about tying me down in the yard at night until I understood I'd be fine (this was her response to me saying how scared I was to walk around campus at night). That hurt, but I stopped hanging out with her for a while, and it was fairly easy to change my idea of her.
The other electrical engineer sometimes ignored me. Not in a mean way. But, say, I'd sit down next to her and wait for her to say hi, but she wouldn't. Maybe she was waiting for me to say hi too. Neither of us would then. Most of the time, we get along fine, but because of those now-and-then moments, we grew apart.
People in general stopped being their strangely friendly selves. I think they got tired and their grades worsened as the year went on. At first, I thought it was weird how nice they were, but after they stopped, I missed it.
In particular, I grew pretty close to one of the girls on my floor. We were in classes together, and we always walked to and from those classes together. We were both slow at our work, usually the last people to finish labs and tests. When I finished slightly before her, I'd wait for her. She did the same for me once. I'd help her with homework and studying, and she'd let me use her mini-fridge and printer. We were both usually the last ones to bed, as we were up all night doing schoolwork and helping each other with it.
But then, she found other friends, people I didn't like particularly in the first place and even less after I became jealous of the time she spent with them. I know it's petty, but it didn't feel fair. She seemed so much happier with them than with me, and what had they ever done for her? They didn't help her study or do homework. They didn't wait for her after class. In fact, they were jerks. Some of them would poke fun at her for being out-of-state and for any other reasons they could come up with. And they drew in permanent marker on her face and played pranks on her. See? Prank-pullers, the kind of people I don't like. . . Okay, fine, so she seemed to enjoy it and she returned the favor to those who drew on her face, but I could tell it bugged her slightly too because she appreciated it when I snatched the marker away from her friends.
One night, it was 4 am the weekend before a chemistry exam, and my friend should have been studying, especially since she was failing chem. I looked out the window and saw her friends restraining her in a bear hug and sticking snow down her socks. I suppose she may have started it, and she threw snow back at them. But then there's the problem of why on earth they were encouraging her to be out goofing off at that time of night, a day before a big test. But she absolutely loves them.
Her friends are mostly from an on-campus youth group type deal, such groups are often exclusive, and the same is true of this one. One of them is somewhat pleasant, though. He's the boy who awkwardly asked me to go rafting at the beginning of the year. My friend is besotted with him, and he with her. Problem is, to be completely honest, he's not a better friend to her than I am. I came to her rescue when they were drawing on her face, and he just sat there. I always told her the truth, and he sometimes didn't. But she loved him so much more than me. Is it because he's a boy? I mean, of course it's because he's a boy.
See, I know this sounds weird, terribly petty, and childish. I know. But I'm being honest.
She started spending more and more time with them -- going to dinner in the cafeteria, playing card games in the study rooms, having Bible studies downstairs, or just hanging out in the boy's room. And not inviting me. She did this more and more. I soon decided I needed to distance myself from her, so I tried to avoid or act cold to her when she WAS around. By the end of the semester, we spent a fraction of the time together that we'd spent before, and I'm barely over my bitterness after not seeing her for three weeks.
Even more than the other girls, this one chipped away at my okayness in the last few weeks of last semester. They all did, though, and it was amazing the feelings I could recognize as being more familiar than feeling okay. In a way, I didn't start feeling like myself again until the first girl disappoined me by threatening to tie me down in the yard. I recognized the feeling of disillusionment regarding her and everyone else on the planet, really, like what I'd felt with my family before college.
When my friend started spending her time with other people instead of me, it was one of those things, those previously so-familiar things I couldn't forget about just by avoiding. It took me back to the pre-college days, when hurt hung on the edge of my thoughts all the time. I had knowledge that bugged me, knowledge about the people around me, knowledge I couldn't -- wouldn't just forget about, because that wouldn't be truthful. It wasn't nearly as bad as pre-college, though. I was still okay most of the time.
I know lots of people go through this -- you find a friend, they find other friends. Heck. It's happened to me before. Maybe, though, I was under the impression that, once people grew up, they'll stick with you if you're a good friend to them. Even if I wasn't under that impression, I'm probably too stupid to avoid becoming friends with people. And even if it's true that grown ups know good friends, that girl is not grown up.
One Friday, she did invite me out with her friends, and we saw the school's band play. I fell asleep. (C'mon, if you were me, you'd know how impossible it is to sit still and stay awake after weeks of not sleeping. The band was good though.) My contacts got dry. One fell out. I was exhausted, irritated at losing a contact, and disoriented from having only one eye that could see clearly. I politely asked my friend to follow through on her promise to get Rafting Boy to drive me home. She suddenly decided she didn't want to bother him. I had to find a ride home myself. I didn't think too much about it then, about what that meant about her priorities and her word. I was too tired to think about it then. I was mad about it later though.
So, first the beginning of the semester, my college friends were part of why I felt okay, but by the end, people were aliens to me, which I'll talk more about in Part 4.
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