There's nights like this when I want to have a blog. I'm listening to that ninth grade era emo music and thinking about feelings. I'm wondering if this would be better off private. I wonder if it should be on tumblr instead. Not sure if I give a fuck.

Late Nights

There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother that's themed around the idea that nothing good ever happens after 2am.  Well, guess what? It's 4am right now.

Twitter also happens to have #latenightconfessions trending.  So of course, I start thinking about my late nights.

I honestly love being able to stay up all night, by myself, and do stupid things on the internet.  I like my me time.  I like facebook stalking and catching up on my tv shows and reading fanfiction.

I equally love staying up all night with other people. 

But college has let me do this more.  I've done four am milkshake runs and hung around Meijer when they restock.  I've walked around a silent campus when it was snowing.  It isn't the studying or partying that's made me feel like I was at college.  It's simply been the ability to have late night adventures, whether with myself or others, on campus or downtown, that's made me feel grown up.

Sure, some bad things can happen after 2am.  But I've also taken more risks, experienced new things, and felt a sense of freedom in the early morning hours.

Late nights make life less boring.  It's when I've made big decisions and even bigger mistakes.  It's staying up with someone else and feeling like the only two people in the world.

My #latenightconfession? I'm suddenly a White Sox fan.

Apparently my very infrequent blog posts are either ubershort or just random and long.  This, is why I have a twitter.

I'm a Quitter

I always go into things well intentioned.  I volunteered because I wanted more teaching experience.  I let you kiss me because I thought it might lead to us being together.  I took an art class because I thought it would make me happier.

But then comes the middle bit.  Where my decision has sunk into my life, and I finally have to live with whatever choice I made.  The lazy bit of me kicks in.  The whiny part of me starts up.  I want to run away from whatever I've committed to.  Not necessarily because it's hard.  Just because the allure of something else, someone else, some other place seems better.  I don't want to do what I'm doing anymore.

So the question proposes itself: do I stay in the mud, or move to the greener grass?  Our society values perseverance over quitting.  Never giving up is how the American Dream is achieved, right?  But if you don't feel like something is the right fit, should you stick with it?  Especially if you'd be letting other people down?

I did winterguard for half a season my sophomore year of high school.  It was intense and took many long hours.  I would count the minutes until practice was over.  I skipped out on the practices that I could.  I didn't practice my drop spins with my rifle on my own time because I couldn't do it in my house (it wouldn't be hard to break a window with that thing!) and it was 30 degrees outside.  Numb hands don't work well.  There were also a couple x rays involved.  I didn't like spending a good ten hours of my week being yelled at, so I wanted to quit.

I brought it up with my best friend, who did guard for a couple years already.  She told me that people don't quit, especially not so late in the season.  The show has been worked out already and everything.  She made it sound like people would hate me for it.

But my mom wanted me to be happy.  Her solution of when I was doing something, (especially if it was voluntary) and I was unhappy, would be to stop wasting my time with it.  So that next practice, she and I went together and she stood up for me while the head coach attempted to guilt me into staying.  Because insulting someone works so well when you want them to stay.  The day I quit was one of the most freeing days of my life.

My guard ended by not having a very good season.  But we had already had a bad season before that.  I'm not entirely to blame for it.  None of my ex-teammates were really mean about it either.  If anything, some of them stopped after the end of that season too.  The coaches were atrocious.

When I made that decision, I chose myself before everyone else.  Maybe that's selfish.

But don't always criticize the quitter.  Sometimes they might just be making a brave choice, and choosing themselves.

I had an open interview of sorts for a job that I'd quite like today.  I was surprised to run into people I know, a couple from high school.  It's weird when I come home from college, because I always inevitably see some kid that I went to school with.  It isn't really good or bad.  Maybe a tad awkward.

Simply, I think it's weird because some of these kids I literally saw every week day for years.  Now that we're all in college, it'll maybe be once a year. Eventually, never again.  Except for maybe a high school reunion or something.

I think that college is a weird time like that.  We're suck in the middle of childhood and adulthood.  We get a taste of what things used to be like on breaks and we see our old friends.  Then college brings more and more adult things and concepts.  We pay for more, work harder, and eventually become self-sufficient as we graduate.

It isn't bad or good.  It's just progress.

Best Friend

My history with best friends is complicated.  My preschool wasn't even in my hometown, so I can't claim that I went to preschool with anyone that I know now.  In elementary school, I didn't really have one.  My friends were mostly who were in my classes and my Girl Scout troop.  But I wouldn't necessarily stay close to one girl for a long time.

But Natsuki moved here from Japan in third grade.  She was my next door neighbor.  I figured since we lived next door, we'd have to be best friends.  In the books, kids best friends always lived across the street or next door.  I read a lot of books, possibly why I lacked in the best friend area.

Originally, the problem was that she didn't speak English.  But we got through the language barrier quick enough and I suppose to some extent became best friends.  Through the years until she moved when we were in seventh grade, we called ourselves best friends, but I don't know exactly if we were until maybe seventh.

Those were the years that I went through my initial dealings with depression and I wasn't exactly a nice person. (Psh, like I am now.)

But we also got close to the girls that I currently call my best friends.  Bridget, Alyssa, and Dayna.  The five of us all lived in the same sub and had known each other since elementary.  Throughout the remainder of middle school and all of high school, I have called these girls my best friends.  There have been additions to the group, but they never lasted that long.  It was just the four of us.

We aren't the most alike, but we know each others' histories.  I can really tell them everything.  It was when my behavior got out of control that I finally went into therapy for depression.  I got help because I was driving them away by being a bitch.

But it can be difficult being best friends with people so different than you.  We've always been busy with different activities and it can be difficult to see each other.  College has made it harder.

It's times like this when I question the label of a "best friend."  They aren't necessarily the first person whom I turn to anymore with my college issues.  Nor do they know every aspect of my life anymore.

I love them to death.  I trust them so much.  But the reality is, how much have our differences and distance from each other affected our friendship?  Is "best friend" just a term that gets used too much, like "I love you"?

I focus on depression too much.  But the reality is that it seems all around me.  I can relate to others who have it.  But they can also bring me down.

I found out that a girl in my class has been going through a similar process as me.  She ultimately ended a friendship, just as I once ended a relationship.

There's the old saying that boys and girls cannot be just friends.  But that's not what I wonder anymore.  I wonder if I can be close with someone else who has depression and not become depressed myself.

I feel like I'm actually more functional than many of the people I have met.  Which is weird...I'm a wreck.  If I have a friend that is going through a tough time, I'm falling with them.

Depression is like a disease.  Easy to spread, difficult to get rid of.

I miss Ibsen.