oh, it has been a bad day.

just a day full of my own circling thoughts and awkwardness and feeling out-of-place and wanting very much to crawl under something and never come out. and on earth is it hard to make friends? and why do i feel 13 everytime i'm slighted socially? why does it have any power in my life?

i feel like i am too old to worry about this kind of nonsense. it's all just self-centered and excessive and self-absorbed and...don't i have anything better to do?

of course i do, i just don't want to do it for the life of me. i was going to type that life is such a struggle for me, but what i mean is that school is a struggle for me. fucking reed college, i am not this maggie anywhere but here. in houston i have friends, deep friendships too! not just this 'hey' and headnods and half-smile crap i get here, and in new york i have people i love dearly who i would very much have closeclose friendships with given the time and space. but here, it is impossible to breath and create a space where i feel at ease with myself. and granted, feeling at ease in my skin is hard usually, but somehow, reed makes it worse. because it is not just my skin and my thighs and my body it is also my brain and my thoughts and my voice. and i feel watched and judged.

and if these boys i've made friendship ovatures at do not reciprocate or respond, i will feel not like they've missed out on fun times and mayhem (which they will have) but like i've been judged, both on my outward appearance and social skills but also on my preformance in that fucking postcolonialism class. and honestly, that class is so hard for me. i cannot apply this theory or find the practicality in this theory and what's really the point (back to that whole crisis of the university).

and why does it have to turn into such a self-critique? why can't i let things go? and what on earth am i thinking about this so much for?

because it isn't actually about these boys being stupid and 'having girlfriends' who will prolly not let them make friends with me anyway, it is actually about my own social ineptitude and the fact that reed reduces me to a quivering nothing by making me judge myself so harshly every day. and making me measure my progress against everyone else's (and i include in this "everyone else" everyone in the field i happen to be studying. absurd, i know). and, by those standard, i wont ever do anything even remotely good enough.

but even if i was living up to my standards (beauty, intelect, sucess--whatever these slippery concepts even mean) i doubt i would be happy. and that is scary. that means i am hardwired to be UNhappy. or maybe it just means i need to trade in my measuring stick.

i am just sad today. sad and sleepless. and now to try that combination of wine + hot bath. hopefully, i can get some of this sadness off myself.