This is going to be the big downer. Honest, but rough nonetheless. It's long, rambling, and it might not make much sense, as I've typed this from about 3-4:45 in the morning. I'd rather not discuss this, so please don't ask me to elaborate on any of this. Thanks.
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When I arrived at the program building at the beginning of this semester, I was full of hopes. I hoped to find friends. I hoped to travel. I hoped that the two would intersect at some point. I think, at the beginning, that everybody really got along well. I mean, we had to. For the most of us, we were strangers in a strange land, and we were all stuck together, for better or for worse.
So, in the first few weeks I did make some friends, I did make traveling plans, and I did go traveling with the friends that I had made. Good job, A+, and all that. A lot of the pictures that you see of me from the first few weeks of the program also feature this group of friends. We all look pretty happy, right? Well we were, myself included. I mean, I had found a group of people who are interested in going places, seeing cities, having fun, and were generally fun to be around. Unfortunately, it didn't last.
I guess the keynote of this whole little post here is the concept of Circles. No matter how open people are, there's always a circle of friends that keeps outsiders, well, out. It's all about exclusivity, really. At the beginning of the semester, the circles were open, nonexistent. For the most part, everybody was new, there were no problems, and we all wanted to know each other. It only took a couple of weeks for 71 students to define what were the circles, the cliques for the rest of the semester. Now, I don't want to sound so grim here. When I talk about circles, I really just mean the people that are most often together. This doesn't have a set level of exclusivity, and some circles were bigger than others. Some weren't really even there.
So as the weeks went on, it became more and more obvious that I wasn't really a part of the circle of friends that I thought I was. Maybe it was because the rest of them were all in the apartments, and maybe it was because the leaders of the circle didn't really like me, as far as being friends was concerned. I think it's a bit of both, to be honest. Regardless, it got more and more uncomfortable as the weeks carried on, and I tried to hold on as well as I could. I was already homesick, but this was something more than that.
Something you should understand about me, in case you don't already. I am a lonely person. I have friends, yes, but I am the type of person who can feel alone in a room full of people, just by virtue of being me. It's something that I've sometimes inadvertently cultivated over the past years. It hasn't prevented me from making friends in my life, but it does make me unwilling and, frankly, fearful that I'll lose them. So I held on. I tried to be as unoffensive as possible to these people whom I considered friends. It's a really horrible existence, fearing the loss of your friends, when you know that if you have to fear something like that, you're going about the whole thing wrong.
The shit hit the fan over our big class trip to Munich, Vienna, and Bratislava. Well, really just in Munich, during Oktoberfest. We were all having a great time, and for a little while, I thought things were doing just fine. We all went around shopping and having fun. There was some drama in the group, but not directed at me, so that was really just fine. Selfish perhaps, but it's the truth. Then, the day that we actually got to sit at a table, it was the beginning of the end for my membership in this little group. Some of us were all sitting around the table, drinking beers and eating food. But it wasn't as happy as it could have been. Leader Girl 1 snapped at me for assuming that she was paying for everything, since she had pulled out a 50 Euro note (and I thought we'd all pay her back later). Leader Girl 2 back her up on this, because they're best friends, and from the same school. 1 and a half liters later, something just snaps. Not that I think I said anything particularly offensive, but whatever it was, it made Girl 1 slam down on me harder than a Mack Truck.
Something along the lines of "You need to change your attitude or you'll never get any fucking friends. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?" I will swear on a stack of Bibles, Torahs, Korans, and Textbooks that I was likely just rambling about how great everyone was. Well, I'm sure it's because I was just drunk on the Festbrau, but it hurt. It hurt more than anything I'd experienced in a long while. And it killed the entire day. When we all dispersed, the two girls had also had some small fight (I don't know what about to this day), and we all separated. I wandered through the streets of Munich, trying to get to the Schloss for an optional tour; anything to take my mind off of what happened. It didn't. I ended up pretty much crying and shambling my way through the streets, not caring where I went. It was luck that I ran into some of the other people from the same group, or else I might have actually gotten hurt wandering into traffic. To make a long story short, the two girls and I talked it out, and we supposedly smoothed the whole thing over. I say supposedly, because it never felt complete to me. I've been convinced ever since then that they don't really like me; no matter how courteous they might be, they don't want to be my friend. Of course, I could just hang out with the other people in the group, right? Not really. It was so tight-knit that it was hard to ever catch them alone. I was out of the group, even though I still hung out with them for most of the rest of the trip.
Afer the trip, we drifted apart. I stopped going out places with them, and they never asked me how I was doing, or anything. I was depressed, is how I was doing. I was miserable. I felt like shit, and that I had actually wasted the first few weeks of the program. All the plans that I had were moot at this point.
Here's the thing: It's really hard to get into people's social circles, even if you've been friendly, when you haven't been there from the start. I couldn't try and go places with people without feeling like I was insinuating myself into their lives. Realistic or not, this is how I thought. I stopped going out on weekends for about two or three weeks straight. I had problems sleeping. I was irritable and tired all the time. I tried to brush off people's concerns, which is incredibly stupid for someone who feels alone. I hate it when people worry about me. It makes me feel pitied.
I thought I was going to London with my first group of friends, but that was a wash, obviously. Instead, I went alone to Brussels and Amsterdam. I went alone because everyone else already had plans. It was a last minute choice for both of the cities, not that I regret choosing them.
Eventually, I stopped feeling so sorry for myself, and got my act together a bit. I tried to get into another group of friends, ones who weren't such exclusive pricks. It worked, mostly. I mean, I spent a lot of time going out places with them and such, but it was never complete. I was always B-List, if you will. I never got invited unless I actively made it known I wanted to go somewhere, and other little things like that. It's disappointing really. I thought that I would be able to hang out with these people even after the program was over, as some of them were staying for the same week I was, but that hasn't happened. I've been passed over.
I've missed a lot of people in this program that I could have gotten to know better, and become friends with. That's my problem to deal with. I'm really just disappointed that things didn't work out as well as I had hoped at the start. Maybe my hopes were a bit too high for reality, but that's a rather grim look at things. Right now, I'm hardly more than a day away from flying back home to the USA, where my old friends await. I've been missing them a lot; I won't waste this opportunity.
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