I am only 20 years old, and having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that I am growing up and starting my life. I saw this coming; last summer certainly was not the same as summer of 2009, and I am thoroughly convinced no summer will top that with respect to the fun I had with the girls. This summer has been one plagued with summer school, all too frequent work days, and a specific agenda for each girl that almost didn't seem to care whether or not a fun day was slipped in every now and then. This is the least amount of time I have seen my friends in probably 15 years, and naturally it's not sitting too well with me. While I enjoy my sleep and alone time as much as the next person, if not more (four online classes on top of working at Hallmark does a number on me), I still need to be around other people and be involved in their lives. I feel as though everyone is slowly slipping away, and there's nothing I can do about it. Sending a text every now and then, or even (mostly unrequited) Facebook messages simply does not do a justice compared to good old fashioned face time. I am realizing how much I took for granted the times when we were all free, all we wanted to do was see each other and make the most of the days before we all parted ways. Now it seems as though we are desperately trying to find a time to even just grab lunch; trying to work around two or three schedules is hard enough, let alone six, and it's starting to become more and more unrealistic. I've already lost my boyfriend this summer, the one person who I spend the most time with for over four months, and an overwhelming sense of isolation and feeling of loneliness has swept over me since we stopped talking last week. He was the one who I was always talking to throughout the day, because I knew that he wanted to talk to me too. Whenever I wanted to share something silly or stupid, he was the one I went to. I don't want to do that with my friends, because as sad as it sounds I'll feel as though I'm pestering them because they have so much going on.
Coming home for summer was supposed to be a blessing; I would come home to people who love me and friends I've had since kindergarten. We had some good times in the beginning- days spent by the pool, nights with each other trying to find something to do, and just generally enjoying each other's company. Right around mid-July, it all just took a turn for the worse. I started having problems with my boyfriend, and when we broke up I was crushed. I reached out to the girls, with hopes of trying to relieve a pain I had never before experienced. Yet every door I had tried to open was almost abruptly shut back in my face. I made it clear I was hurting, I told them I wasn't okay. And after locking myself in the bathroom for 15 minutes, replaying an old voice message and reliving the past that I was not going to get back, you'd think they would see that I was hurting...badly. Either they didn't, or they just assumed it was something I would deal with alone. I know that I isolate myself, but this only happens when I feel like I have no other alternative. I am not going to sit here and blame them for having their own lives, but getting invited to go out with them by a different friend was a slap in my tear stained face. I know this is something I will get through, and I know now that my expectations of how people will act based on how I would act in the same situation need to be lowered, but reaching this point has been a painful road. Typing all of this out makes it seem as though I am throwing myself a pity party, but in reality I'm trying to cope with the changing times in the best way I know how; aside from listening to music I'm making sense of the world by throwing it onto something I can look at and read. My only hope is that while everyone continues to move on with their lives and travel down the paths they're determined to go down, they remember who was there for them when they needed it.
