Back, back when I was highschool I wasn't too popular. I wasn't unpopular, you know, one of those kids who was sad or ugly or that you felt uncomfortable even making eye contact with. Infact, some people thought I was really cool or a mystery or really liked me. I was fine, I just didn't fit in with any particular group, I never found a niche. At least, a niche I could stick with.

You know, there were the punk kids, they were pretty dedicated to being, well, punk. And I liked combat boots and was certainly disenchanted enough, but some of the other stuff just bugged me. And the geeks were just...such geeks. And all the pretty blond girls? Well, that just wasn't really an option. And really, it was my fault, some part of me knew I could go out, buy some new outfit, dedicate myself to some clique, annoying shit and all, and just be comfortable. Just fit in, just have friends.

Something in me never could do that.

Fucking highschool.

And I get to college, and was lucky enough to land in a place and time where group homogeneity wasn't so prevalent and punk kids and hippies and total geeks were never purely just that and we all loved eachother and I was very very popular. I was me, and I had fun, and didn't have to be a thing. one of the things. Just me.

And we would joke about how that had all happened. Me and my friends. and How highschool all that was, and how lucky we were to be past a point in which everyone was so resigned to the label.

But it's not true is it? Sometimes I wonder if it was all a dream.

The other night I was at a party. A party full of very nice people. Actually very wonderful people. And there I was feeling lonely in a crowd, misplaced, just like I was back in highschool. They were just all so..alike. Heading onto Noah's boat of good citizenship two by two. Sweet couples, women well dressed and lightly adorned and looking slightly smug in their successful transitionship into adulthood, men seeminly dressed by their partners, drunk and maybe a little tired, doing their thing.

And I am not that. And I felt that I was not that, and I began to measure how much of that I would need to be in the same way I migtht gently evaulate whether I would need to get a mohawk or could just die my hair to fit in. What would it take? Cohabitation? A ring? A house? What would make me feel normal. Make me feel okay?

And I left and went looking for other friends and I went to this bar where they go and I realized they weren't there because they were all at a party. A party I was invited to last year, but am now now now far too boring to be invited to. Far to annoying and dull and sleepy and pedantic to be welcome in a more interesting crowd, but far too unconventional and novel and liberal in my exceptions to fit in with the previous crowd, I stood alone.

Maybe this is just how this goes. Crowds of people I will float through and never fit into. Maybe I am just not a joiner. Maybe I just don't have the commitment, the wherewithal, the drive, even the need.

And I was able to put a name on this distance. A point to this pointlessness, a context to why I've felt so afloat this last year.

Some part of me, still so alone, lost from my nation of people who are nothing in particular, but so much of alot of things. Loss.

They are out there. One in every crowd. One I love. One beautiful hippie and one fantastic punk rock kid and one excellent geek I love. I love them, they love me, but a person does not a community make.

And there they are, sattelites, some with a separate orbit, some a planet unto themselves. And me? I'm just a restless astronaut. Looking for somewhere to land. Looking for somewhere to finally land. Wondering if this is my way, this is my role, or if I just haven't found my own sun quite yet.