Where Summer Left Me

I wondered how the summer would leave me. Well, it's left me with a quite altered personality. According to everyone I'm more mature, it's evident I'm more reflective, a little quieter. Those make it sound as though the change is for the better; I cannot tell. My moods are also not as stable as they once were; while they're not quite at the level one might classify, "Swings", they are, perhaps, "Mood Tilts".

Those who I used to consider rather close friends are now prone to boring or annoying me at intervals, at no fault of their own. I simply find their jokes no longer funny, their energy no longer catching. Half a year ago I had four people I had the potential to become good friends with, save one obstacle, and three best friends. The situations with the four have not shifted, my three best friends have each left me, in their own ways.

This leaves me with a simultaneous loneliness, desire to be alone, and desire to branch out so fully that I depend not in the least on any one person or relationship.

I still feel inspired to take on big projects, and to talk to new people. I have a desire to take on the problem of our schools Latin Curriculum; have even done some research to my ends, and to promote the establishment of a Foreign Language Honors Society at West. I was excited to recieve two postcards in the mail earlier this week (total count now 5!) and to discover I had a foreign exchange student from Italy, a foreign exchange student from Brazil, and a girl who just moved from Brazil all in my Math Class! It almost makes Math Class worth it, and I have have talked with two of them now at some length. I feel like getting to know everyone, my shyness seems to have evaporated.

It's strange. I care what others think about me, but mostly with anger at them. Seeing girls whispering and darting their eyes to their friends, about me, perhaps, or about freshmen, or about some guy, or some girl who was their friend yesterday... It fills me with the foretaste of rage and then fades into deep disgust. I want out of that entire world, but at the same time, I don't care. I feel greatly as if they don't matter. Talk about me. Go ahead.

Strangely enough, the group of people I respect enough to value their opinions has shrunken to awful proportions. And my parents made the cut, believe it or not. As did most of my teachers (roughly 75%), and nearly all of the other adults I'm close to. The group of high school and college students I value, however, is pathetic, considering that I probably wouldn't meet my own requirements.

Teenagers all go through periods of finding themselves, but it's strange. I don't feel as though I have searched; I feel as though I have awoken to find that I am changed, for the better or the worse, and it is nearly strange to me. When I am with an old friend or in an old place, echoes of my former feelings pass through my mind, but they are also foreign to me.

I feel alernatively like taking on the whole world and the whole school with everything I have, and like going into my room and shutting my door and learning the world inside and out through the safe windows of books, and like taking a long, long walk into the august sunset, tracing the rays of the vanishing sun to the west and beyond.

And that's where summer left me.