drip, drop

Laying in bed with my electric heating pad and comforter, listening to the rain is one of my favorite pastimes. The smell of clean air floats in, washing the room of the smell of my roommate's cooking. Unfortunately, that is not the only thing than seems to be washing away. As I lay here, thinking about life, I realize that I don't hold tight to relationships. Sure, I call my mom and sister weekly, chat with some friends from high school or my first university a couple times a month, and others about once a year.

Moving always has its difficulties: different bed, strange people, and new routines. The new things aren't necessarily the difficult ones: what to do with old friends? What level of connection is needed to keep the relationship alive without compromising new relationships? Friends are just difficult sometimes. There really is no good general analogy as to how friends affect your life. Sure, they are like bras or glue or pillars but what happens when the glue becomes brittle or the bra clasp breaks or the pillars are in an earthquake? Can it be fixed?

I have often wondered how I have kept the friends that I have with how little I seem to communicate with them. In total, I keep in contact with less than ten friends on a regular basis from the last six years (who I don't physically see regularly). At the same time, some of these friends, I feel as comfortable now as I did five years ago with them.

Here at my current school, I feel out of the loop. I know a lot of people but not a lot of people know me. A few will take the time to hear my rants and raves but I still feel out of place. There is no one who is an "inner circle" friend of mine within several hundred miles of me. It hurts to be without the warm atmosphere of a close friend, sharing ideas and a pot of tea, mulling over the past and flinging ourselves into the future. I just haven't been able to make that connection that use to come so naturally. It seems that once I get comfortable, I don't want to try to improve my situation. That is how I have felt for the majority of the this school year but now it is biting me in the butt. I should have made more and closer friends about 5 months ago but instead, here I am barely remembering some people's names. I guess I must make the best of my situation and press forward with an open mind and open arms.