How Do You Deal?

The last few days have been horrible, at best. It seems everything I know is collapsing around me like ruins during an earthquake. Everything is changing at the most in-opportune time. I just got a new apartment and I'm living over five hours away from my family. It looks like the one constant in my life has made the decision to leave me for reasons undisclosed. I didn't make any real connections with people during my last two semesters here at WSU and it looks like now I'll be paying for it. I'm on the verge of being completely alone in what is mostly a foreign area for me.

The obvious answer to the question is to make new friends. My problem with that, however, is that everyone here is a child. A fun time consists of getting blackout drunk or high as a kite. The majority appeal is that we're here to party and if you aren't partying, you aren't fun at all. Sure, going to parties is fun. Drinking a little is entertaining. But I don't enjoy it as much as some people do. I don't like not being in full control of myself around people I don't know. Common "wisdom" to my problem is "Drink more, you won't care about the people around you." I've never been the party type. No matter how much I want to believe it, I'm not comfortable with just decent friends and acquaintances. I'd much rather have a few really close friends than countless face appearances. It seems I'm the only one sailing that ship though, and I don't know how to handle it.

I don't know how to be alone. I don't know how to make new friends anymore. I haven't had to do that since fifth grade when I moved to Olympia. And now it seems like I have to do it again. Why? How is this fair at all? Why is the one person I've cared for and sacrificed so much for having doubts about me? All these questions swim through my head. I'm looking for answers more desperate than Marlin for Nemo. Yet, the more I look, prod, poke, and ask, the more elusive the answers become. The most recent advice I was given for my problems was to steel myself and be the constant during all the change. Seems I have to work for what I thought was always going to be there.

I envy those who are waited hand and foot sometimes. The people who have everything in their lives handed to them on a silver platter. Many times, I catch myself thinking about how it must be nice for them. Failing to understand why my life has always been rigorous work even though I have always been a good person. I know karma isn't how the world really works but I wonder why the world works as it does. I am constantly under siege by enemies I cannot eliminate. Constantly punching and kicking a steel door that separates myself from the apparent happy lives of others.

If the worst happens, I won't know how to deal with it. Bog myself down with schoolwork and hopefully a job so that I don't have time to dwell on my losses? I don't think that's a healthy lifestyle. Life is supposed to be balanced between work and play. To focus on just work for me would be to go against how I have been living. Apparently the only constant in life is change. I say forget that. When you find something that is good, you stick with it and work towards making that good even better. Throwing away that good in search of some other good is a waste. I am expected to be the constant, the brick house withstanding howling gusts from the wolf's lungs. However with enough weathering, wear, and tear, even the sturdiest rocks break down into sand.