Ah-ha! Second wind! I've got it, eureka, et cetera... Okay, two points, loosely related. Point one: Living on my own scares me. Has scared me for a good long while, but this is the sort of fear you get when you know you'll have go through with it. Theory versus application, so to speak. What in the name of all that's good am I going to do?!? *sigh* Get out there and jump into it, I suppose... but I'm pretty reluctant. I've never been a typical teen when it comes to risk-taking. Which leads me to point two...

 

Point two, I might warn you, is a highly debated subject. I am voicing my own personal opinions on this, which I do not recommend for anyone without my unique mental construction. This is a disclaimer, a warning--Abandon All Objective Logic, Ye Who Read On.

 

All right. That said, I have become really disillusioned about the people with whom I spend my time. Not *all* of them, thank goodness... But some. Some whom I will, luckily for them, not name. I *will* say that most of my friends are, uhm, "theatre people." This is not a clever euphemism, really... they're all involved with stage productions, thus, "theatre." (I am told this alternate spelling is some sort of distinction. Being a linguaphile, I'm willing to concede that argument.) Now, one always hears about how the shop class kids are doing this illicit and risque stuff, how the jocks are doing it, but... the theatre kids? Come on.

 

I feel like I ought to have seen it coming, really. I take it as a personal demerit that I didn't detect it. Nevertheless, I am still beating myself over it. I don't do this stuff. The drugs. The other various illegal activities. The casual sexual encounters (which may or may not overlap with the other two said categories). I don't do this stuff. This would *apparently* explain why I feel left out, and not invited to things... I always chalked it up to being unpopular. I guess it's just because I don't want to go smoke some pot, go skinnydipping in some forsakenly freezing lake at two in the morning, and then go get some oral sex. Good grief... I am a bitter, bitter person right now.

 

So, in summary, I am afraid to go live on my own at college, not insignificantly because I expect that most people I meet will be secretly practicing illicit activities unbeknownst to me. I am definitely pissed on this topic. I am *not* changing who I am, but I am disappointed that my morality makes me: a) the unpopular one, and b) the guy who gets the mental wind knocked out of him when he realizes what's going on. I'm not even a smores 'n' Jesus superChristian. ("smores 'n' Jesus" is a local reference, don't wrack your brain trying to identify it) I'm just a regular guy, who happens to be a Lutheran; I do what I do because I think it'll work out well for me.

 

*deep sigh* That's it for now, my Adoring Public. I think I'm going to go try and work on salvaging my personal images of my friends... And maybe chant, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," a few thousand times to myself.