I have a terrible habit of doing the vast majority of reflecting on my past (or present, for that matter) while I am in a melancholy mood. Currently, though, I'm in what is for me a superb state of mind. Hopefully, while writing this update now, I'll be able to look back on it later in the same sort of positive way. That would be nice. Of course, more likely I'll just say later that "now I've realized" something else, something totally negative. Oh well. So it goes, right?

Anyhow, as those of you who know me know, I spent the summer working at a Girl Scout Camp near San Francisco. It was an awesome experience. I got my "approaching nervous breakdown" session out of the way first, which let me view each subsequent session with an increasingly positive attitude. But I never will look at a group of seven year-olds the same way again. They aren't the same at camp as they are at school, oh no. I suspect that little girls may not actually acquire souls or feelings of guilt until the age of eight or older.

But overall, it was a great learning experience. I learned that I don't think I want children for a long, long time, and that I actually can be a friendly and sociable person to complete strangers. Of course, many of those strangers were children, but it's a start, isn't it? I even made some good friends among my co-counselors, and it was really awesome to be able to meet people from so many different countries. It's neat to be able to say things like "Yes, I have friends in such places as England and South Africa." Not that the Americans weren't amazing as well - the ten or so of us rocked too, if I may say so myself.

I think most kids should have "the camp experience." If I'd had it as a kid, I'm sure I'd be much less anti-social and hermit-like now. Hell, even working there this summer helped with that, so maybe it's never too late. Girl Scout camp, particularly, seems to be a very accepting and supportive environment. Especially for "alternative" types of lifestyles and people. I don't think I've ever seen such high occurences of dyed and/or spiked hair, and unique piercings and tatoos, as among the all-camp pretraining at the Girl Scout camp I worked at. It was cool.

Camp was definitely worth it, despite all the chaos that went along with it and the 14 hour workdays. I really feel like I made a difference in the lives of some of my campers. I'm not sure if I'll return to the same camp next year, because I do have some issues with it, but I have little doubt I'll be counseling at some camp, somewhere.

Then, besides camp, were the two other big happenings of the summer. Suffice it to say that both things were on the surface very bad, but I feel will, given time, prove to actually be at least neutral or enlightening, and perhaps even positive, for all of those involved. Or me, at least. But since I'm the one writing this and the one living my life, that's the most important, of course. Selfish? Self-centered? You betcha!

Anyway, during the day I am generally accepting of and non-focusing on each of these respective losses. Unfortunately though, for the last week I've been dreaming about things being different in these two situations every night. Dreams are one of the worst ways, I've found, that your subconcious will effectively mock you with implications like "You think you're over this, that you've learned from it, that you're not going to do this to yourself again? Ha! Take this!" *A mental equivalent to someone stabbing you in the heart with a sword ensues*

Well, maybe it's not that bad. But it is still quite difficult to get off to a good start in the day when you wake up feeling like complete sh*t because of a dream you had that was actually happy, but only caused you sadness in your realization that it was not, in fact, reality.

I'm sure I'll soon do more writing on these two unfortunate happenings in my usual indirect fashion. But at the moment, I am reasonably satisfied with my life's recent events, so I'll leave that alone as to not bring down my mood.

I'd like to end by asking anyone who reads this to not underestimate the effect they may have on anyone they interact with during the course of any given day. Almost two weeks ago, I fell down some stairs and had been limping pretty badly until somewhat recently, feeling quite pathetic as I did so. On my way back from the hospital one of those days, I ran into a guy who used to live in my house. He slowed down to match my disabled pace, and talked to me for about five minutes until he got to his campus bus stop. Just that little effort of meaningless small talk completely reversed my awful depressed mood and made me feel great. Not just "ok again," but great. So you never know when someone might be "on the verge," Why not try to make a small difference and do something you might happen to consider? Do it for me, do it for yourself, do it for society. Come on, you know you're thinking about it.

I think that my way of thinking may differ from that of many people in that I tend to connect most things that happen in my life to things that have happened in my life before. Instead of viewing each recent incident as separate and analyzing it in its singularity, I link it with similar (or opposite) past events and try to figure out their net effect.

I say this because I feel like I've been evened out, that I now lack both the weight of bad karma, and the feeling of being owed a particular kindness by the fates. Because of this, I feel like I can make my own fate. It's a powerful sort of feeling, to know that one is in control and probably not acting on either latent feelings of guilt, or a desire for vengeance.

Also, I've realized that many of the things I do to try and atone for things I feel guilty about generally end up making things worse anyway - not particularly for me, but for others. I don't really believe that life itself keeps score, but our subconcious may end up evening things out according to its own notions of such a thing, in its own twisted way.

So this is probably a good time for me to make new friends, though I really hope they aren't engaging in their own self-fulfilling prophecies.

At the moment I feel...bewildered. I've found out something that just doesn't fit in with my expectation of how my little sphere of the world should be. I am horrified and repulsed at what I've been told, but I am still making excuses for why it must not be true, or how I could possibly rationalize it out and accept it if it were true.

There are a few reasons why it might not be true. A game of Telephone or Operator shows one example of why, as does the reasoning behind hearsay generally not being admittable as evidence in court cases. And for that matter, even if I'd gotten it directly from the horse's mouth, the particular horse involved isn't known for being all that accurate anyway.

But if it is true...god. I am disgusted. The mere attempted act in itself is one of the most repugnant I can imagine, but what makes it unforgivable in its severity is that its supposed perputrator verbally shared my same disgust at it merely a few hours before or after.

I suppose I just get irked when the way someone interacts with me seems to run completely opposite to the way everyone else seems to perceive them. This has happened before, of course. I am beginning to wonder if I will ever experience anything that seems completely new and unique to me.

I can't stand hypocrisy, though. I tolerate it to a certain extent in (some of) my friends, but only because they make up for it in so many other ways. I suppose I'll avoid forming any conclusions for a little while, as I consider how I should handle this, and make the decision of whether or not I actually care enough to do or say anything about it anyway.

Ok, so maybe it's not that big a deal in the scheme of things. But nonetheless, it is gross, and finding out this small piece of (hopefully mis-)information has thoroughly ruined my evening.

I'm not quite sure why my reaction to things is always so strong approximately an hour after I find out about or experience them. Seeing as how I'm constantly working to better improve my skills of apathy, though, this does show progress. There used to be only a a three second delay before I erupted into some strong show of emotion, be it some sort of physical violence, a string of profanity, or tears.

Actually, I'm not sure if it's true that this increased incubation period means that I've become less affected by this sort of information over the past, say, few years. When I think back on things that have affected me deeply enough for me to become really upset for a long time, true, they did happen a while ago for the most part, but those things were much worse than anything that's been thrown at me recently.

So maybe I've made no progress toward being as carefree and laid-back as I'd like to be at all, my life has just gotten less intense.

Well, that's disappointing, isn't it? To think that all the things I've done just because they seemed "interesting" have been to no avail, and in fact my life was more interesting when I purposely tried to settle into a rut (but was unsuccessful). Oh, well. At least I still have those small moments in time where everything seems bigger than it is, and I feel quite strongly about things I have little interest in the next morning. These moments, though they be short, are interesting.

My English professor told our class today that it's been shown that two random people will have more to talk about if they are both college graduates from colleges in different areas of the country than if one is and one isn't a college graduate, and they grew up in the same place.

There is something about this finding that really worries me. Sure, I know that finishing college, especially one like the U of C, is almost a nonrefundable admission pass into the cognitive elite. But we are learning what has been called a different sort of language here, and I worry it's at the expense of the ones we grew up with.

Now for some people there isn't a difference. They were born to parents with degrees, in suburbs where everyone's parents have degrees, and they were able to mimic the talk of affluence before they ever actually learned the meaning of its vocabulary. But there are some of us that lack that pre-existing connection to this sort of environment. And for us, if we care about making any sort of small positive difference in the kind of place where we grew up, it's important that we not lose the ability to communicate in our native tongues.

If we do, we'll never be able to translate between the two. A high school teacher told me once that growing up where I did was a good thing, because for the rest of my life I would feel comfortable where others might fear to tread. And that made sense to me. But being in this kind of environment is not exactly conducive to maintaining that ability. As I learn how to talk comfortably with peers here that I don't actually know, I fear I'm losing some of the defensive abilities that I have at home, like knowing how to walk so I won't be bothered, or recognize situations that are potentially really dangerous.

But even more important than that, I fear I'm losing my connection with the people back there. Among the people I knew from my neighborhood were my age but didn't go to my "special" high school (I owe my being here and not pregnant to that place), no one went to a 4-year college, and no one stayed very long at community college if they started to attend at all. If I break all ties to the place I grew up, the younger kids I knew won't have any sort of native to follow that will lead them to what most people would consider "a good path" - one that doesn't end in teenage pregnancy or a minimum wage job and includes some sort of higher education and awareness of more global issues.

Instead, when they ask each other "Do you know anyone from around here who went to college?" they'll either say "Yeah, I heard about some girl, but she ran as fast and as far away from here as she could as soon as she got the chance," or, even worse, "No, I haven't heard of anyone. I don't think you can get to college from here."

I feel like I have a responsibility to try to be a sort of example for anyone who came from less than optimal circumstances and wants to change them. I lost many friends on my way here - when I felt they posed a serious risk to my ability to achieve my goals. Part of me always felt like I abandoned them to make sure I could save myself, and feels bad, even now, about bailing on them when maybe something I might have said or did could have helped them do...more...with their lives.

I don't know. Maybe in a few years when I graduate I won't care anymore, and I'll allow myself to be absorbed into a monotonous suburbia, somewhere, anywhere, without even a yearly donation to some charity for "at-risk" kids. Maybe I'll see enough of a change by then that I'll make fun of myself later for thinking that the example or presence of little ol' me would have any sort of real effect. But right now I am giving serious thought to going back and trying to give something back - something that, except for my mother and my high school, I never really got as much of as I could have - which made it harder for me, but a change in could make easier for others.

I believe that nearly all of the people in our lives can somehow fit into one of three categories. First, there are the people we really want, be it for friendship, sex, a relationship, whatever. Those who draw us with their magnetism, rapier wit, and sparkling intelligence - or simply by merit of their being extremely good looking. We tend to pursue them in the first steps of interaction, or wish we could work up the nerve to. These are the kinds of friends that we are proud to have, and the lovers we love to show off and brag about, right from the beginning.

Then there are the mid-ground people. If they forget to call, it generally doesn't matter much - and if it does, it's at more the principle that they didn't do something they said they would than actual hurt at the omittance. Sometimes we keep them as acquaintances instead of making into real friends. Or maybe they are friends, but the kind that first came to be more out of convenience than a real connection. This is not to say that mid-ground people can't become tried and true, really good friends, but the beginning of the relationship with them lacked the sort of pre-existing spark of attraction (sexual or otherwise) above.

Finally, there are people we don't particularly care for personally, so don't bother with for the most part. If these people are for some reason a part of our lives, it's because they possess some other indirectly useful characteristic, like knowing where the parties or drugs or good study spots are, or are our only friends, thus keeping us from being friendless losers. In a way, they are space-fillers. These types of people are those that we may sometimes kick ourselves for associating with, because for whatever reason they lack the qualities that would fit them into one of the other, more meaningful categories for us. Acknowledging a relationship with them may be accompanied by a sort of hesitation, not out of anxiety over what other people might think about the admitted bond, but rather a self-pause over why exactly it is that we interact with them at all.

This is not to say that these three categories are always distinct and there can be no overlap between the two. For instance, the physical attraction that puts someone into the "really want" category could also be looked at as the only useful characteristic of a "space-filler". Lust's incredible power is probably the only reason we'd label them as the first type instead of the third.

But regardless, I'm sure that everyone can think of people they are really glad to know, just because of the people they are. On the other hand, when you really think about it, there are also almost certainly those who, upon closer examination, you aren't all that sure you're actually glad to know.

Unfortunately, the kind of people we really want to know like I've described, don't appear all that often. And when they do, they seem to attract hoardes of people that flock to them. Thus, pursuing any type of relationship with someone you really want involves with it an element of risk. Because at least initially, you care about them more than they do about you. Situations like that are always dangerous for the one who has more invested, in fact, but that's another day's rambling.

To get a blow-off from a mid-ground person may sting, but it won't hurt too much in the long run. (From a space-filler, it can even be a relief of sorts.) But to be rejected by someone you really like and want to know better, can be disabling. Strangely enough, though, it is often during these times that we make the times spent with mid-ground people more meaningful, or at least seem that way. Perhaps this is a settling of sorts, or an attempt to recompensate for the lack of response we got from those we truly desired.

It's like making a friend...that you don't give much thought to until your best friend goes away for a while. Only then do you ask yourself if maybe you couldn't in fact be closer to the person that was before then only mid-ground. That, in itself, is the difference between the two. It doesn't take a separate social circumstance to make you want to be closer to a person in the first category.

That makes me feel much better. I'm truly lucky, or blessed, or just plain fortunate, to have now and have had previously, a few precious, prized relationships with people that I really wanted to know. Not that I value my other friendships any less because they started as mid-ground, but isn't it nice to know that you really can be drawn to someone for all the right reasons?