The Big Picture

Warning: Emo Mitchy ahead

So in a typical perusal of social networking sites, I've come to discover that one of the people from my graduating high school class has already had a child. I saw her in the music building last semester, but I didn't really get any kind of indication that she had had a baby (or if she was still pregnant at the time, it sure didn't look like it).

So of my high school class of about 145 people, at least four of us are married, at least one of us has had children, and one has already died. I have no clue how many others may be engaged, expecting, or married. After all, I'm not Facebook friends with everyone from my class. I don't know why I'm so infatuated with random statistics of my high school class. How many of us will have graduated from college? How many of us will become lawyers, doctors, mothers, fathers? I mean I don't care about the people who were in my college Honors English class, or even my undergrad Engineering department. Just high school. Maybe it's because I genuinely did love high school.

I know things will happen in due time. I just sometimes wonder if I'm postponing them all for no good reason. I want to be a dad someday. I really do. But I also want to get settled in to graduate school before anything serious can happen. But that was my plan for undergrad. When I had my freshman orientation with a couple of people I knew, we told each other some non-academic goals we all had. One guy's goal was to make a lot of money. Another guy's and my plans were to have at least one girlfriend in our undergraduate careers. He did, and she was generally nice but sometimes overly narcissistic. Me? Nope. When I gave myself an ultimatum to run off to New Mexico on my 21st birthday if I hadn't met anyone special by then, did I stick to it? Nope. Don't get me wrong, I know I've met a lot of amazing, talented, charismatic people throughout my school and college experience, but I've just always felt like something's missing. Like someone's missing in this picture.

In short, I am fucking lonely. I'm trying my hardest not to see 'having a girlfriend' as some kind of status symbol, but it keeps popping up, like I should have had at least ONE by now or something. It's a social metric. And I have been determined to be more social as a graduate student, and for the most part I think I have; hanging out with people, going to social events with people outside of class time. It's a small step, I know, but I'm just worried now that schoolwork is picking up I'll have to push those things aside like I did for most of my undergrad. I worked my ass off as an undergrad, getting a degree in 4 years which a lot of people have to space out to 5, PLUS another degree, and I have the merits to show for it.

I never went to frat parties. I stayed home and studied or played Guitar Hero or watched movies.

I went to the occassional concert, but only with people I knew.

Maybe I need to let go of my high school friends. But they're the only people I've ever felt close to. I love the handful of college friends I've gotten to know. Maybe I just need more time to open up, be myself. I can't barge in like a pompous jerk. Of course, they're the ones who get noticed.

I don't know. This is just a midnight rant when I should've been working on ODE/PDE homework.