Friendship and Feelings

I've got a lot on my mind right now. Which really isn't all that new.

However, I feel as though something has changed about me. Something is different and has been such since yesterday and specifically since last night.

Last night, I met up with someone with whom I'm Facebook friends with but had never met in person. In other words, we were strictly online friends.

I found this person through Tumblr several months back. The Tumblr was called "This is what a Librarian Looks Like" and is basically a Tumblr dedicated to breaking down the stereotypes of what a Librarian looks like. Librarians are shown hiking, riding motorcycles, with crazy colored hair and doing all sorts of things that people wouldn't think a librarian would do.  Library science students and librarians of all types are invited to submit photos.

Well, this one person submitted a picture of herself wearing a Hufflepuff Team Captain Quidditch shirt. I recognized the shirt right away as I own the exact same one myself from Teefury. She also said how she was a SLIS (School of Library and Information Science) student at UNT (University of North Texas).  Plus she said she loved Harry Potter! I was interested to know more about her right away based on the information she posted. Mostly the fact that she owned the same T-shirt as I did and was a grad student attending the same university as I was, was what got me intersted to know more about her.

I reblogged the post commenting on it and hoping that she would respond back but I didn't want to wait. Here was someone that I could potentially get to know more about and maybe even possibly get to be friends with.

So being the Librarian I am, I decided to search Facebook to see if perhaps she had a profile. I guess I figured someone who knew enough about Tumblr to submit a photo of themselves would have a higher chance of  being on other social media sites too.

It turns out I was right. She did have a Facebook profile. It turns out that she was actually living in Denton which made me even happier.  I sent her a message just saying hi and telling her that I'd seen her photo submission.

A few months later she responded back. It had taken her awhile because Facebook hadn't let her known she had a message for some reason. She also sent a friend request which I accepted right away.

From then on we were Facebook friends but it wasn't until the beginning of this semester that I considered perhaps meeting up with her in person. I've been looking for a friend here in Denton for some time now but hadn't had much luck.  From what I knew about her, she seemed like someone I could be friends with in person.  I figured I'd at least try.

So I asked her if we could meet up sometime. She agreed that we should meet up but unfortunately, she wasn't able to right at the beginning of the semester since she worked in the undergraduate admissions office and was extremely busy.

I wanted to give her time for things to calm down before we tried to meet up and so I let time go by. Eventually things just got really busy with me and I sorta forgot about it for awhile. I mean, I didn't exactly forget entirely but basically we were both just so busy with our own lives that it wasn't exactly a big priority at the moment.

I've been struggling with loneliness in addition to other things for the longest time. Loneliness increasingly so this semester. I've just really been wanting a friend this semester. Someone here that I could just call and talk to or even  just to hang out with. But with so little time left before I graduated and moved, I didn't think  I'd ever find someone and basically just started giving up.

Then things got really difficult for me this week. I guess things just reached a breaking point of sorts and I felt I could just really really use a friend.  Therapy has been great and it certainly has helped but I only go once a week and sometimes it just seems like a really long time from one session to the next. Plus with only about an hour a week, sometimes not everything gets covered.

I just really need someone else to talk to. Someone close by. I can't talk to my family since they're actually part of some of my problems. All my other friends are way too far away to be of much help. My Oklahoma friends have lately been too busy with their own lives and own struggles to really be online when I've needed them. Basically at this point, I've just felt like I've been left alone. That no one is there for me when I need them. That no one really seems to care.

I've mostly kept this feeling of me feeling so alone to Twitter and Tumblr and here. I haven't really said much on Facebook. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I guess part of it is because I have family and good family friends on there. Perhaps I just never wanted them to be overly concerned about me when there was no real reason for concern. But on Monday, I finally posted something about it. I tried to be honest and just say how I could use a friend and how I've tried to find one without much luck.

Not long after that, I received a message from the fellow SLIS student. She had seen my status update and it reminded her that we still hadn't gotten together. She wanted to meet up  and wanted to know when I'd be free in the evening. I told here I was free anytime and we set up a meeting at a coffee shop downtown for last night.

Last night, we met up and it was great. The only thing was that some random drunk guy joined us. He was a friendly guy though but he was just completely drunk and you could tell. He certainly made the conversation interesting. Despite this, I still had a good time.

I was a bit nervous prior to meeting her since I only knew from online. It's just how things are.  Also since the last time I had met up with an online friend in Denton, things didn't exactly work out afterwards. I guess I was just hoping this time would be different.

But things went great and I felt at ease with her even with the random guy joining in.  Afterwards, she asked if I was doing anything on Saturday and when I told her I wasn't, we made plans to meet up again. Honestly, I think we both just wanted to try again to get to know one another without having a random drunk guy join in.

I don't know what it is though but already I'm feeling better about things. I don't feel nearly as alone as I have before. Even though, I still really don't know her that well yet. Still there's something that tells me that she and I are going to get along just fine. I get a positive vibe from her and I think it helps knowing that she's going through some of the same things I have in terms of the Library program. That wasn't the case with the other two Denton people I'd met up with before.
She's also the same age as I am and again, that helps a great deal.

 It's just weird I guess. I already feel much better about things and yet, I barely know her! One night of conversation in which it wasn't even just the 2 of us and already I feel different. I feel like things are starting to look up. Things just seem more positive.  It's like I already feel a bit of weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  I have a feeling that things will improve even more after Saturday.

I needed this to happen and now that it has, I can only hope that things are going to start improving. The downside is that I've probably finally found a friend and now I'll be leaving her. I plan to stay in contact with her though. Still though, if I had only been able to have found her earlier. Perhaps things would have been even better than they are now. I know they would have been. Some of the things I'm dealing with in therapy now probably wouldn't be problems.

My therapist this semester has been amazing and she's certainly been helping me a great deal. I feel as though things have certainly improved.  In fact I'm actually a bit sad that I'm going to be moving when I feel as though we've begun making serious progress. I feel bad about having to leave her after only being with her for a semester and I wish that didn't have to happen. But it does.

She's done so much for me this semester and at least I know I have someone to talk to on a weekly basis. Still though, I know I need support from someone else other than her. That it would help to have someone else besides her that can support me and help me further. I need someone else I can trust and so far I haven't had that. So far I've had to deal with things all on my own without the support of anyone else. I need someone else to help me continue to improve.  I hope I have finally found that here. I'm just tired of trying to handle things all on my own with what feels like no support from anyone else because I really don't have anyone else.

Between my therapy session on Wednesday and my meeting up with a new possible friend, already things seem to be doing better for me. Less stressful. I guess I just also needed to get out. I guess I've just been pretty much stuck inside my apartment too long that I don't really know what it's like to get out and be with other people. Again though, I haven't exactly had a lot of people to go out with either. Still though, it's what I needed and I'm extremely grateful for it.

I've just in general felt a lot better since yesterday. I feel less stressed. More relaxed. The pressure and stress I've been feeling the past few weeks is still there but it doesn't seem as bad right now. I think a combination of therapy and meeting up with someone has a lot to do with it (That and partly due to the fact that I went to the chiropractor for an adjustment today. I just feel very relaxed at the moment).

Switching topics here now, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately regarding therapy. I mentioned yesterday how my therapist noticed that I brushed over feeling inadequate; that she stopped me and ask me directly about it and that's when I broke down. It's happened before. I've mentioned how during other sessions she's asked me how I felt about things and I would give a long drawn out answer that didn't really answer the question. That I basically just gave a ran around and didn't really give an answer.  I still trying to figure out why this is exactly. Why I just can't seem to give a straight answer about how I'm feeling. At least in conversations with my therapist that is. I seem to have no problems expressing how I feel in my writing. At least that's how it seems. Then again, I don't think I've really ever been able to express how I feel verbally to people. It's like I'd rather not talk about how I really feel. At least not in person. I'll express myself in my writing but when it comes to telling someone face to face how I feel, I can't seem to do it Which now that I think about it is actually partly why Twitter person got upset with me. I wrote about how I felt rather than actually telling her in person. Then again though, I really couldn't tell her in person since we didn't really hang out together. Also I'm not sure I would've be able to tell her how I really felt to her face.

Even when someone is trying to help me, I can't seem to tell them how I really feel emotionally.  I mean, I should be telling my therapist exactly how I feel. She needs to know what I'm feeling in order to better understand the situation and to better be able to help me. She's asking because it's important.
Yet I don't get why I can't just be honest even with her. Again, I don't seem to have any problems writing about my emotions. Sometimes I wish I could just send her to this blog or even my Writing Tumblr blog. I honestly feel as though she'd gain a better understanding of me and my emotions about things that way than from me telling her.  I feel that she'd find a lot more about me and pick up on patterns. Sometimes I just feel it would be easier that way. I just seem to be better at written expression rather than verbal expression. I just wish I knew why this is.

I want to be able to tell her how I honestly feel about things but I just seem to be unable to do so.  I feel as though we had another breakthrough moment during our session on Wednesday so perhaps I'm getting there.

As of right now though, things just seem to be looking up. I'm hopeful that things continue that way. 

Living in a lonely world...

Sometimes I feel as though moving here to Denton wasn't necessarily the best idea for me. I am now a graduate student taking 8 hrs of classes and all are online. I don't currently have a job or anything. I don't even go to an exercise class or anything. Because of all this, my days are spent mostly inside my apartment attempting to do homework most days and actually doing it other days. Other things about my day include staying up really late at night, doing things on the internet, and as a result getting up late the next day. Most days I don't even leave my apartment except for a brief amount of time. Usually it's to go to Walmart or the library or just to get out and find something for lunch. None of it is very exciting. I don't know if it's because of this that I've become extremely lazy and procrastinate a lot. I have time to finish my homework before it's actually due but yet I still seem to wait until the day it's due to work on it. I don't understand it but I just can't get into a routine regarding my homework. Here I'm almost 2/3rds finished with my first semester of Grad school and I have yet to develop a routine. I think part of the problem is that I don't have any structure in my life at the moment. I don't have any sort of rigorous schedule holding me to do my work at a certain time. To be honest, I know I need a job but I also just haven't really been really putting effort into actually finding one. At first I thought this was all just because I'm burnt out on school. I've been going to school almost nonstop since I got out of high school. I mean, I just graduated in May and here I am again. Sure I've had breaks between classes. This past summer was really my first break from classes and that's only because my degree program is on a strict plan that doesn't offer the classes during the summer. I used to be extremely busy. Semester Y (last fall) was insanely busy and was literally the Semester from Hell (excuse my language please). I had a nervous breakdown at one point and as a result, had to get someone to help me learn to cope with the rest of the semester and it worked. Then came my last semester, Semester Z, which was strictly Student Teaching. That was also busy but not as much as Semester Y. It was the normal teaching stuff: grading papers, writing lesson plans,etc. That sort of thing. Yet throughout both Semester Y and Z, I was also not working. I couldn't. That was one thing my advisor had told me: Don't work during Semester Y because it's nearly impossible. Prior to Semester Y (Semester X), I had been working at the local public library and it began to get too much for me to both work and juggle classes. Yet even though I was busy, I still managed to get my schoolwork finished. I ended up having to quit though because it just got to be too stressful for me. I guess what I'm really needed is a happy medium between insanely busy and near laziness. Don't get me wrong. I still get stressed out with my graduate classes. For instance, I'm writing a blog instead of working on a mid-term paper that's due tomorrow. I'm a little stressed about getting the paper done and also some upcoming projects that are due soon (in about 2 weeks). The difference is that I have time to finish everything before it's due so I don't have to get stressed.
I've also been feeling pretty depressed recently. For the past two weekends, I've driven to see some of my friends in Oklahoma City and we've gone to two awesome concerts at a couple of the libraries. I've had so much fun hanging out with my friends and it's been really awesome. Yet it's also made me think about things. At the wrock show I went to on Sunday, I miracously met someone who is also from Denton. She's a Freshmen at the University of North Texas (my college). I didn't really talk to her much though but still at least I met someone. This got me thinking though. I've been feeling really lonely lately. I realize that I have awesome friends but just not here in Denton with me. It makes me think back to when I first moved to Oklahoma. It took me some time but I sorta made friends in a few of my classes the first semester. I guess I can't really call them friends when I think about it though. I guess I could say they were more just people I got to know through class. There was however, one person that I met and ended up becoming friends with later and that was because she and I were in the same degree plan. Still though, I don't think I actually made any "real" friends my first semester. Once I got into my degree classes my second semester, that's when I actually started making more friends. Then came the Tour de Nerdfighting event in Oklahoma City and I met some people who I later became online friends with and later IRL friends (this is evidenced by the last couple of weekends). I can't say that I don' t have friends because I do. I just don't have any friends here that I can hang out with on a regular basis and such. I should say yet but I don't think that's an accurate description. I don't think I will ever really have friends here. Going back to the fact that my classes are all online, the only time I really see anyone was at the Web Institute at the beginning of the semester and that was only a few days. I met some people and hung out with them but it's been a bit hard to keep a friendship with them when you only saw them a few days and then you don't see them again. You might be lucky enough to have them in other classes and you might end up graduating during the same semester but you don't really know. It's been really hard for me. It's been especially hard to find anyone that's a nerdfighter. Everywhere I've lived, it's been hard: my hometown in New Mexico (pretty sure I'm the only one), at Oklahoma State in Stillwater(there were some but I never found them), and now here in Denton at University of North Texas (or just Denton in general, since there's like 3 colleges here). I'm sure that people are out there, I just haven't found them yet and I really don't know how to find them. It's also been a bit hard to find people that I can relate to. I have no probably being friends with undergrads. It's not a big deal, but I still want at least one friend that can relate to me right now. I guess also because I never really experienced the whole college thing, that isolates me a bit more. I never was in a dorm room and quite honestly never really wanted that experience. I feel as though missing out on these experiences is partly why I'm so lonely now. I could try making friends through my church. However, the church I go to, while I really like it, has very few college students at it. Most of them go to the one on either the UNT or TWU campus which I have yet to actually visit. Plus it's hard for me to go to another campus church when I love and miss the one back at Oklahoma State. I eventually made a lot of friends there and I just liked it.
I wonder if everything that happened back in May could be part of the reason for me being lonely here and everything else. I honestly think I might just need to go talk to someone and get some help. I need something to get me out of this cave of loneliness and laziness I've gotton myself into. Something needs to be done.