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What if someone I barely knew looked into ht inthat scares me most? What if someone could tell that the reason I concentrate so s that keep ard emotions because they don’t come easily to me, because when other people talk about love or happiness, I feel only a cloying sense of confusion and fear that I’s Not that I don’t experience happiness or love rown slowly and steadily over time, and they exist at comfortable levels But deeper than that? The kind of happiness that fills a person up? Or love that can overwhele the very essence of who they are? I don’t believe I have that kind of thing inonI understand Soood at

But now even that feels off-kilter

I turn then, intending to apologize, to ader behind me I whip around and see that he’s slipped around the other side of the picnic table and is heading back to the field, where what’s left of his friends are gathered together talking

Dylan is there too, Silas’s arht to his side They all wear looks of concern as they talk, and I s, feeling as if the distance between us is th of a table and a dozen yards of playing field

I’m on the outside here And what hurts more than the fact that no one seems to notice me as I turn and head for Dylan’s car is the fact that I’m comfortable on the outside It’s what I know It’s who I ah will alone?

DYLAN DROPS ME off at home, but doesn’t co atat her car alone, but I just told her I’d walked off to think Which is the truth Besides, she had plans to go over to Silas’s house, and I didn’t want to ruin that I flip on the laht off, and take a seat inSilas only since the start of the semester, and I can already acutely feel her absence When she stays at his house, and I’m left alone in our two-bedroo, and I should relish the extra space, the alone time

Instead, the loneliness creeps into the shadowed corners, and I find ht in the place just so that I don’t feel so alone

This could be my future

It’s not as if I can keep a roommate forever When I’m thirty-five, I’ll be hard-pressed to find a friend to live with me just so I don’t have to come home to an empty house But I suppose I’ll spend most of my time in a lab then anyway I’m not afraid to be married tois just a phase It has to be I will love the challenge of working in bioe of e innuht feel in the few short hours a day I’ll spend inmyself into a relationship that will only be half real No, I don’t want or need to have another personup my life There is too h h school dates, I know enough to see that relationships take work You can’t just consider your own needs anyhs people down

No I’m happy as I am Especially when it’s the only way I can be

Despite those deter out the spiral where I’d jotted down s that had seemed obvious at the time

NORMAL COLLEGE THINGS