Thinking back on things...

So right now I'm kinda thinking about all of the feelings I've felt in the past when I've gotten really depressed.  Maybe it has something to do with listening to 21 Guns on loop and catching up on old Space Center friends on Facebook, but I'm just gonna put out what I'm thinking right now before I forget, and so I can go back and read this later and remember all those feelings. 

About a year and a half ago:

Hmmm...let's see...I was a freshman which was still in the junior high...I was looking forward to teching our school play, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat...I was just starting to get into that whole 'tech' thing...my friend circle was very small, mostly just consisting of friends that were also volunteers at the Space Center.  So...for some reason (I can't really remember how it started) I felt a lot like I didn't matter and that nobody cared about me.  Of course I knew that my parents and my religious leaders cared, but they never showed it, and my parents were always busy with other things, so I didn't get much attention.  It wasn't really about attention though, it was about finding someone who truly understood me.  I'm pretty sure that lots of people thought that I was really annoying by poking them, randomly following them, or tapping them on the opposite shoulder from where I was.  But I think I was really just trying to get them to acknowledge me, or recognize that I was still there silently listening to their conversation.  My space center friends shared the most in common as far as interests, but there were still very often times that they would talk about stuff I knew absolutely nothing about like Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, and lots of other Gameboy or Gamecube games that I had never played.  Sometimes these conversations would even last for days.  It made me feel kinda like a lump of lint to just sit there and eat my lunch while they talked on and on and on about things that made no sense to me.  It also didn't help that one of my friends went through a phase where he was constantly saying "Go die in a hole." to me and other people rather often.  I found it quite a bit offensive because that's kinda how I felt.  I compared my feelings of life to being stuck in hole about 20 ft down in the ground and I couldn't get out of it no matter how hard I tried.  I would look up and see blue sky and beautiful clouds up above me, but all I could do was look at them and dream that I could be out of the hole and sitting on the grass making shapes out of the clouds.  But, alas, I was stuck in a hole.  It was not cool feeling this way all the time, but I didn't know how to get out of it.  I didn't really trust anyone enough to tell them about all of the feelings inside of me, and anyways, I figured they wouldn't really truly understand.  I didn't think that they would understand that even though I had lots of great things in my life, nothing would fill this empty pit inside of me. 

Don't worry though, I eventually found other friends that didn't talk about Zelda all the time, and slowly, life got better and I moved on.


About half a year ago:

The feelings I felt this time were kinda the same as the time before but not entirely.  I mainly felt ignored.  I didn't feel so much of not mattering or no one caring.  I still had my friends that I had found from my previous bout, but this was the first 'official' year of high school and they were always caught up in who's the cutest guy, school dances, date ideas, etc.  This is not my kind of thing at all.  I'm not interested in any of those things.  My space center friends would always leave to go to someone's house during lunch, and our paths didn't cross very often between classes.  Nothing can really explain the abandon I felt when they left and I realized that there was no one else around to talk to for about an hour.  I felt like a loner who just sat and listened to everybody's conversations, but never being able to say anything relating to it because there is nothing that I would say.  That may not make complete sense, but it's like if they're talking about high school dances, I'd never been to one and didn't care about them anyways.  I knew what it felt like to sit down right next to one of my friends and be completely ignored for an entire hour.  I would poke her and I think once I even punched her, but she was too caught up in talking about boys to notice.  This really hurt me, and whenever I would accuse her of talking about boys or dances all the time, she wouldn't believe me.  I obviously got tired of being ignored every single day, so I decided to try an experiment.  I started sitting about ten feet away from their group a bit further horizontally down the steps where they would always sit day after day.  Sometimes I would read my scriptures and sometimes I would draw in my sketchbook.  I was never noticed, except once by accident when a loud noise startled me and I looked around to see what had caused it and made eye contact with one of them.  I soon started trying different places to go.  I eventually settled on outside the seminary building around the back.  I would read my scriptures every day as I ate my lunch.  I even remember being out there when it was snowing, keeping my scriptures under my trench coat so the snow wouldn't get the pages wet, and trying to read at the same time.  I think it healed my sad feelings being out there reading the word of God where nobody could hurt me further.  I continued to do this throughout the school year, and slowly, I found myself being able to stand hanging around those friends who had hurt me so much, but never listened when I tried to explain why.  I obviously don't trust them as much as I used to.  I think I discovered from it all is that it's better for me to spend most of my free time alone drawing or reading the scriptures.  I'm not super great at social situations in general, especially if there isn't a common interest/topic. 

I will see what next school year brings.  But I think that I've finally figured out where I belong.

Don't worry about me, though.  I think I've figured this all out.  ;)

~M.B.~