The Crest of Friendship

I have missed my friends...

I've spent the last couple days mostly watching episodes of Digimon (season 1 [eBay is a wonderous place!]) And I think that now it's finally safe to say that I've made a full recovery from finals week. Boy was that a long, misserable week... as an end to a bad month.... to finnish of a not so great semester...

don't get me wrong; my grades all came out fine. It was the price I paid to get those grades... It seemed as though I was drifting away from all my friends, as though all my classes were working together to keep me from them... Especially my painting class... It just happened to be scheduled at 7 in the evening, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This meant that I was still in class when the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) had its large group meeting (tues. at 8).

It wasn't until it was too late that I realized just how much I missed it... How I depended on it to connect with people... and with God.... As the weeks went by, I could really feel the difference, really felt disconnected...

I did have other opportunities... a Bible study, a Dicipleship group, and the occational venture into the Gaming Club should I get out of painting early enough on a Thursday night (or thought I could afford to lose the sleep..) But it seemed like there was always something I had to dash off and do as soon as anything ended... no hanging around... Sometimes I was just scared too; afraid I'd already lost what little scraps of social skills I'd had.

I'm not sure where the transition happened, but I began to feel giddy if I thought there was any chance at all that I'd get to hang out with someone... even just lingering a few minutes after church to talk to people. I felt so disconnected.

I guess I finnaly hit my breaking point at the end of the semester, I didn't want to care about school anymore, I just wanted to play games with my friends.... By Wednesday, I had already pushed my way through a huge project for my 3D class (complete with several hours-consuming computer errors), crammed for my Econ final and passed it with nearly airborn colors, crammed for and completed an online exam that prevented me from attending IVCF's annual end-of-the-year bring-your-own-meat BBQ so that I could be ontime to present my final painting and creteque those of others.... (I feel tired just thinking about it...) Wednesday I tried to study for my one remaining final, but I think I did more napping... I was tired, run-down and lonely... so of course I jumped at the chance to play Dungens and Dragons that night.

D&D is not a quick game. The 'short' adventure we played took us until 1am when we got kicked out of the TC. My brain had been telling me for some time that I should have left to finish my cramming, but I didn't care anymore. I wanted to get to know these people, and I wanted to see the game through to the end. I had only made it to two other games this semester, and had left both of them early.

I had a blast, and I felt alive again! My poor girlfriend, Alicia did not, however... so we wound up talking and even praying together for some time afterward on the phone (something else I had missed terribly [a blessing in disguise kind of thing]).

Needless to say, I was quite exauhsted the next day. I did however, see imediate answers to the prayers of the previous night; most of what was on the test were things I had already memorized, and the rest were either things I had looked over the night before or available through an online resource he allowed us to access. Also, there was little danger of falling asleep on my test as I had just sprinted to the test site after waking only ten minutes beforehand (not quite the answer I had expected, but it worked)

Anywho.... I'm sidetracking pretty baddly... sort of. I needed to let all that out anyway. It's my blog; I'll do whatever I feel like! Gosh! ...

So yeah. In spite of nearly-missed-consequences, I believe it was worth the lost sleep. So much so that I did something similar the next night rather than letting myself recover and going to bed early.

A different set of friends happened upon me relaxing in front of a large dorm-TV (not near as important, but something else I had come to miss). They invited me to walk across town to hang out at a 24 hour gas station. It was about 10:30 or so, when my body was saying, "alright, we can watch this show, but I'm way overdue to crash, man." But then I was invited to CitGo, and I'm like, "Pfft! forget that! I haven't hung out with these people all semester! I'm going!"
Again, well worth it. As well was Raelene's appartment-warming party the next afternoon/evening/night. (especially since most all of us slept the first hour or so of it away n_n)

Playing games and talking and just hanging out with people ... those few events were huge to me, starting to fill this massive void that I had allowed to dry up.

Oh! And then there was ... last night? well Wednesday, I decided that I was ready to get out of the house again and scrounged together whoever I could to join me for dinner and a movie. So Tom, Brandi, and I met Alicia and Adam at the local Chinese dining establishment.
We decided we'd been a little slow in ariving to make the 7 O'clock show, so we just took our sweet time eating/hanging out. (we also sought out others to join us, but that didn't work out...)
Another wonderously enjoyable evening, even moreso than the others mentioned, simply because I was more coherent by this time.

So, yeah... bottom line, school is important, but friends are an even bigger part of life. I became an empty-basket-case without them.
I've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm not sure that God made me to be a social butterfly, but I'm positive I wasn't ment to be the social hermit crab I've become. I'm coming back out of my shell!

...hopefully not all of my updates will take this long to write... or read... {insert shameless plug for The Hithiker's Guide to the Galexy here}