Realizations(?)

1-29-12 (though I haven't gone to bed from the 28th yet, so technically it's still Saturday night for me, rather than Sunday morning)

I've discovered that it takes me time to settle into a group, to really feel like a part of it. It takes me a while to truly trust and feel comfortable with people. Some of that's due to my personality, I think (I consider myself an introvert, though the business office manager doesn't think that's the case), but that's not the whole story. It never is.

I've never fit in well. In public school it was because I was the smart girl who didn't do things on weekends (read: Sabbath) and who didn't eat pork (read: Adventist Christian). Sure, I had friends on my middle school academic team, but that was at school. My church was/is small enough that the only kids were me and my three younger siblings, and I got enough of them at home. It's just not the same. The only time I got close enough to people was in eighth grade, and then only really for a semester. Sure, we went and saw Attack of the Clones together and I stayed at Meaghan's house once or twice, but that was it.

Even in groups like Girl Scouts, 4-H, and Pathfinders I didn't fit in. I was always too responsible, too punctual, too excited about what we were doing. I didn't fit with the kids my age, the older kids saw me as a tagalong, and the adults didn't want me around. And when I did try to act like the kids my age, I was always told, "Why are you acting like that? Act like you normally do." Like that's not a bunch of mixed messages.

In high school I no longer had to worry about the Sabbath issue or the food issue. If anything, everyone ate better than I did, seeing as they were vegetarians and I wasn't. But I was still a smart girl, and still operating unconsciously under the Ender principle (see last post). I started making friends, but part of that went downhill in sophomore year because I had friends decide to drop me for no explained reason and had a crush tell me that he only liked me as a friend (and we're friends now, but it was sort of devastating to a 15-year-old). I wrapped myself tightly in a shell that didn't get truly broken into until I was a student missionary. Some of the people I served with are some of my closest friends because they saw me at the highs and the lows, the triumphs and the defeats.

And now, now I have a group that I feel that I fit into. But I'm still pursued by an annoying fear that someday they will drop me too, for no explained reason, or because they found someone else better to spend their time with, like new friends or girlfriends or boyfriends or what have you. I am afraid that one day I will be cast out as unworthy for some reason that I'm not even allowed to know. And let's not even get into romance--I mean, seriously, this post is long enough already and I don't want to make me feel worse.

God and I are working on fixing all this (well, He's working on me, but that's semantics), and I know that my friends aren't like that, that my fears are baseless, but the knowledge and the fear don't meet in my mind. More's the pity.

Anyway, this was TL;DR, so if you suffered through my venting, I'm sorry.

PS: I don't know what set this off, or why I chose to post it. I am actually okay, just angsty. Anyway, I need to get to bed so I can do homework, work and go to the symphony orchestra concert later today.