Threads

I am, inarguably, not a “people person.” When given the choice, ninety-five percent of the time I’ll choose to be alone, to stay home, to keep to myself. But I have to say, that other five percent really pains me sometimes.

It’s my mom’s birthday today, so I went out to pick up ice cream for her. As I was pulling out of the Kroger parking lot, I saw two guys, probably between my age and my brother’s, standing on the sidewalk talking and looking thrilled to be doing just that, like loitering outside of a grocery store with friends was just the greatest thing ever. I don’t even pretend to understand that.

But for some reason, I felt lonely. I was sitting in my car with a gallon of ice cream on the passenger’s seat, and I felt lonlier than I can recall feeling in a long time. It was stupid. That’s really the only word I can use to describe it. It was heavy and painful and it just settled over me in a matter of seconds, and I was actually jealous of two boys standing on a godforsaken sidewalk, simply because they weren’t alone. What does that say about me?

It’s not as if I don’t have friends. I do. We talk every day, and I see Ally everyday. Really, Koko and me and Ally, that’s all it is for me. Sometimes I let Ally drag me out with her newly acquired friends–and by drag, I mean I chauffeur them around because obviously, I would otherwise not be going–and sometimes, I make smalltalk with people who I used to know online or when I run into them. But really, I don’t like the idea of having to keep up with too many people. It’s tiresome, especially when they’re all sniping at each other. I tried that, had a large circle of friends that I did things with in my first semester at GSU, but they all fought and fell apart and tried to tug me to one side or another. I don’t like being used a stepping stool in an argument or anything else, so I erased their numbers the moment I moved out of the dorm.

Not being in school this semester has given me a lot of time to think about things like that. But it’s also given me a lot of time to realize that the future I had begun to picture for myself is unraveling. I’ve switched majors once now, thought about doing it twice, and I still can’t see anything anymore. It also doesn’t help that my parents, at any given opportunity, find it wise to plan my future for me. They always tell me I’m meant to be an English major, that teaching wouldn’t suite me, that I’m clearly meant to work as a copy editor in a publishing company, so on, so forth.

I don’t want to do any of that. I love English and literature and the mechanics of it all, but I just don’t want to spend my time studying something I already know and love for the next four years. I want something new, something I’ve never done before, but my parents say things like, “You’re just feeling insecure. You shouldn’t make any rash decisions!” or “Just keep on where you are. You already know you like it, so why bother changing?”

It’s infuriating that they think so little of my ability to make decisions on my own. Right now, I’m registered as a Literature and Philosophy double major. I’m dropping the Literature part next time I go down to campus. Philosophy will set me exactly where I need to go, which is law school. I want to be a lawyer, and I want to work with intellectual property law. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.

I also, of course, want desperately to be a published author, but I know better than to bank my future on that. I love to write, and I’ll never stop, but it’s impossible to say whether or not that will ever actually take me anywhere.

Today is a very melancholy day.