Outsider

I’ve found myself in a familiar place here, on the outside. Since I started high school I’ve never really belonged to any particular group. I never fit into any of the “cliques” or whatever the name for them is these days. I wasn’t a goth, skater, popular or any other easily defined type of person. I didn’t even fit in with the nerds. Back in those days I used to tell myself that I was happier and better off alone, after all they were just acting that way to fit in with each other, the phonies. In a way I was happier, avoidance let my escape the anxiety which I dreaded so much but it left me without any proper friends or connections.

Here, it hasn’t taken long for me to become the odd one out. I don’t go out to clubs etc so I don’t fit in here either. I suppose it doesn’t help that I am incredibly quiet and also older than my other flatmates but I did initially make the effort to try and get to know them, however that has not gone well. I can talk to them in passing and I’ve even had short conversations with them when I’ve seen them alone but I can’t participate in group discussions so I’m effectively frozen out. I’d like to be friends with them, but we don’t really have anything at all in common.

So out of practice am I, that I doubt that I will make any friends here at all. I’ve already embarrassed myself by trying to speak to someone in my class who also looked to be by themselves and the only other person whose name I know and have spoken too reminded me too much of my old “friends” from school. I don’t want to be in that situation again where I am made to feel stupid for actually wanting to work, and having my notes copied and all that. I desperately want to try my hardest to do well in this degree and I don’t want it being spoiled by another person who thinks they’re “too cool for school” and mocks people for working hard. I mean, what’s the point? Why pay all that money if you aren’t going to concentrate?

I apologise for this incoherent ramble, I was woke up by water leaking into my room from the flat above so I’m not in the greatest of moods.