People & Relations

A year can teach you a lot about people. It can take a small thing that can really change your opinion of someone, for better or worse. Looking back, it seems like this year has been nothing but ups and downs.
It’s always disconcerting when you have someone tell you that someone else can’t stand you. Not that I really mind that. There are plenty of people who I can’t stand, and there are probably a large number of people that can’t stand me. But it’s always annoying when they don’t come out and say something. Why do people leave things hanging like that? I don’t get it.
I think that this year has been one of the more difficult ones. I’ve had my heart broken worse than I’ve ever had it, but I got over it, and realized how much of an idiot I was for it in the first place. I guess some things are catching up to me. I’ve been disappointed more times than I can count this time around, and it really hurt, for the first time, it really pained me to think about some people. But, as the saying goes, time heals all wounds, and it did. Didn’t help much with self-confidence, but there’s other things for that, like Sky Diving or landmine removal. I still can’t seem to get things right around women. People have offered suggestions, some of which have worked, some of which have completely backfired, but I guess I’m learning. Maybe sometime, somewhere, somehow.
I’ve also seen people close to death, and despite all mental preparations, it shook me more than I could have thought possible. My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital, and for a while, we thought that he wouldn’t make it. It was sobering to see it happen, and to my family as it was happening. I don’t know how my mother or aunt got through it the way that they did. I don’t really know how I managed not to get as upset as them. I guess that I do have to thank my friends for what support they gave me for it, especially during the really bad parts.
I value friends more, I think. At one point, I completely stopped hanging out with some people because of their girlfriends or other friends, and the ways that they’ve changed because of that. Sometimes I really wish it didn’t happen, but sometimes, I’ve found that if I step back and look at them from a different perspective, I don’t blame myself. There were other times when I just wish that people would open their eyes a bit, earlier, and see the people around them.
I’ve become a little too opinionated with some groups of people, and less so with others. There’s a couple people at the University that I absolutely couldn’t stand at all the past two years. They talked too much, were annoying and everyone was annoyed by them. One of them, I’ll never enjoy being with – mainly for the things that he was arrested for, and given my work at a summer camp. But the other, I’ve grown to like more. I’ve listened more, and better, and realized that he’s not a bad guy. By the same token, I’ve grown to really loath some types of people, mainly when I go up to Burlington – the rich, liberal freshmen that seem to populate UVM, and who’ve only taken on their own political views just because that’s the environment. They dress like they’re a couple of pay scales below what they’re really at, not to save money, but because it’s hip and popular, just as being a geek seems to have somehow been vaulted into popularity by the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Geekdom should not be trendy. Ever. But then again, I’m opinionated about this subject. But, I just wish that people would stop pretending who they aren’t, and be who they really are. That being said, I’ve realized that among some of my closer friends, you see them and they are who they are. They don’t pretend to be something different, they don’t act different because of different social situations. They are as you see them, and for that, I truly enjoy being with them.