Waiting

I was just crawling through the Classmates.com pages to see if anyone else I want to get back in touch with has registered. And then I started thinking about high school -- a subject not very far from my mind these days as I prepare for student teaching and final certification.

High school is a bit of a blur for me. I don't remember the details all that well. Oh, here and there are some memories so clear it's like they just happened this morning. But for the most part, all I remember is general feelings. Mostly that was unhappiness and confusion. I never "got" high school. I wasn't interested in the stuff you're "supposed" to be interested in.

But if I had to put a theme to it -- I'm working on themes in my rewrite of the fantasy novel -- I'd say that it was more like the frustration of being in a holding pattern. Circling around and around but never being able to actually get to where I wanted to be. Sometimes I'd just repeat to myself over and over that it wouldn't last forever. Just wait it out. Just wait it out. Just wait it out.

And it wasn't all bad. I had a few great friends and had lots of laughs and too many of those pseudo-intellectual discussions that you can only be serious about when you are 17 years old.

But I spent a lot of time alone. I still do, of course. I'm comfortable being alone, but happiest when I'm with a few people I know and love. I'm miserable and nervous and lost in a crowd of people. I always feel like there's some code that I'm missing. Like the secret password into the club. I never know what to say and always chose exactly the wrong thing.

Ironically, dialogue is one of the strongest parts of my writing. Of course, there I have lot of time to try out different responses until I find the right one.

But anyway, back to the theme... Ten years after my high school graduation, I still feel like I'm waiting for something. To finish my Masters, to figure out what to do with my "marriageaphobic" boy... not that I'm stressed about marriage - quite the opposite. I'd just like to have kids while I'm still young enough to enjoy running after them. And I don't have any desire to be a single parent - too damn hard.

To wrap up: when I was little I used to say to my mom, "I've only got 10 patients (patience) and 9 of them are gone."