No sense of place

        One of the weirdest things about graduating from college and moving across the country is the absolute social disorientation. It's SO WEIRD. I mean, who sits in their room and says “Hey, I think Imma just leave all the people that I know and go to a place where I don't know anyone at all except for one person that I'm dating, but whom I've barely seen in a year”? Well, as someone who does that, let me tell you, it really effs up your sense of having a place to belong. I definitely don't belong back at Bethel anymore since I graduated (also I don't want to be “that person,” and all you people know exactly who I mean), I haven't belonged in Clay Center since about a year after I left, and I don't quite feel like I belong here, either. It's like being stuck in limbo, and it's just SO WEIRD.

        I mean, it certainly hasn't been a bad thing to move out here, it's just something that's super far outside of my realm of experience. The last time I left everyone that I knew and went someplace new was when I moved to college, and even then, I already knew Brian, Jackie, Alan, Dan, Ben, and Matt. And I was only 2 hours from home. And also everyone on my hall was in the exact same situation. And I'm realizing that I'll never have another experience again where I am literally surrounded on all sides by people that I could hang out with and be friends with. At Bethel, all I had to do was walk upstairs or even just yell across the mod, and someone would show up to talk to me. At Bethel, I was super extroverted (or at least, more extroverted than I'd ever been in my life) because it was so EASY to make friends and maintain friendships with people, because I saw them literally EVERY DAY, sometimes for hours every day. But now, I'm trying to make friends with people that I only see once a week at church, and it's really hard to build a relationship inside of one hour-long encounter per week. Now, I have to actually exert actual EFFORT to spend time with people. But the thing is, having to exert so much effort (money and time to BART across the Bay, walk for an hour, repeat) to spend time with people that I barely know is just such a skewed cost:benefit analysis. I mean, it's pretty fun and stuff, but it's just so much easier to be introverted again and just not go out. Which, obviously, makes my feeling of “oh poor me, I don't have any friends” just that much worse.

        So right now, after having gone back to Bethel and seeing that life goes on without me (of course it does, good grief, even I'M not THAT conceited!), and then coming back to San Francisco, where my friend circle is in its infancy, I'm just experiencing the loss of a sense of belonging that necessarily accompanies new surroundings. And you know, in a year, I'm sure I'll look back and be like “haha, what a silly person I was, everything turned out just fine!”, but right now I'm kind of like “OMG I WILL NEVER EVER HAVE GOOD FRIENDS EVER AGAIN!!!!”