Fish Out of Water

I got ice around my neck. I got this cross studded with Austrian crystals...it's so cute...

But I digress. Being at home has been so surreal. I realized I'm a completely different person than I was a year ago, and I feel even more out of place than I did before. But it's not a bad out-of-place feeling, because I know there is somewhere that I do belong. So I feel at peace. But the people I spent four years of high school with, the people at my church, where I've been going for 17 years, my own family...they're all strangers somehow. And I know it's not them that have changed, it's me. It's kinda frightening, to tell you the truth. That's pretty much why I have mixed feelings about going back to my old high school tomorrow night. It's my old choir's Spring Concert, and I promised Stacie (my "little sis") that I would come. Plus, I need to pay a visit to my old choir director, especially since at one point the choir was the only reason I went to school. If it wasn't for that, though, I don't know if I would bother. The longer I talk to my old friends, the more I feel myself slipping away. It's hard. I know I was never that much like them in the first place, and now that I'm not completely alone and helpless without them anymore, perhaps it is time to leave pretense behind and just move on. You know, not pretend there's some deep, meaningful friendship there when there's really not. It's not everybody; in fact, I met an old friend just today in Kmart, and we had a nice, long conversation. I just have some specific people in mind that I know let me hang out with them because they felt sorry for me, and I feel that now's the time to just let them go, and then all of us can move on with our lives and not have these uncomfortable silences when we try to make conversation. I don't know why it's so hard. Maybe I'm too afraid of change to let the past go. Sigh... Nostalgia and sentiment...it complicates things.