Not ready to be found

I'm suddenly gripped by the need to ask my friends, "Do you worry about me?"

The fact that I have to ask the question means I know the answer.

I feel like people are walking on eggshells around me, and like they've been doing so for a while but I've just failed to notice.  Like everyone's just waiting for me to fall apart, ready to jump in and help put the pieces back together.  It's entirely possible that's just my own anxieties reflecting back at me, but there are little things that make me think it's real.

The way certain friends ask questions and then make eye contact when they think I'm not looking.  The way some of my closer coworkers asked around questions rather than asking directly.  It's like everyone's worried that the wrong question or the wrong phrasing might be the last straw.

The problem is, I'm not sure they're wrong.

For the last couple of years, I've been putting everything into school and work.  That's not unreasonable, necessarily: working full time and taking 12-14 units a semester is a *lot* of work, far more than I think most people realize.  There have been semesters when I could count the hours of a week not actively spent on school, work, or sleeping on two hands with fingers left over.  Enrolling "full-time" and cutting back to part-time work is actually likely to make me less busy.

And, really, June through September are likely to be a nightmare.  Moving alone, especially since I have no idea how housing is going to work yet, is going to be a lot to deal with.  And March wasn't necessarily fun by any means; I ended up finally going to get a massage yesterday because my back was so tense I couldn't sleep Saturday night.

But looming ahead of all of this, like an iceberg in the fog, is the fact of school itself.  I'm not worried about the course load (well, on the 0.1% chance I get into Caltech, I will be, but anywhere else, I know I can handle it).  No, what I'm worried about is the social life.

I mean, let's face it: I'm gong to be 41 in an environment where 90% of the population is under 30 (and 75% under 25).  Even when I was in my 20s, I didn't really socialize well with twenties-types.  I don't drink, I don't "party", I don't do parties well... I know I've got personality quirks that make me weird for people to get used to.  And on top of all that, I'm gay, which - while almost certainly more acceptable now than 20 years ago - still adds complexity to what is already a complex situation.

And the thing is this: what I think most people worry about, what I've specifically avoided dealing with for years, is my lack of social life.  I've dated a little.  I've had sex a little.  I can be pleasant and friendly at resorts and such.  But I don't have much of a social life.

When I was hanging out with L every weekend, I had the excuse that those nights were my socializing.  I didn't do much, mind: mostly I was just there as chauffeur and ATM.  But it was at least the illusion of going out regularly and talking with people.  When we stopped hanging out, I could make the excuse that it was my school and work load preventing me from going out, and while that was mostly true, I could have made time if I wanted to.

I'm about to be thrown into a situation where socializing isn't going to be an option, and I feel totally unprepared for it.  Don't get me wrong: I would love to meet people, make friends, maybe even date more (no, not the 18-year-olds; I think I've only dated two people in my life who were under 21, and I was 16 for one of them).  Part of what is terrifying is the idea of spending 2 years at school and *not* doing any of these things.  But it's a completely foreign environment to me, and I'm going in with a bunch of "strikes" against me.

Going back to school meant accepting that I was going to be out of control for a lot of things.  I knew that when I started.  It's not going to keep me from doing it.  But that also means I feel totally unprepared for this, no matter what the reality is.  I'm not even kidding myself that I've got my shit together this time: I know I don't.  But that doesn't mean I feel less like a lost boy, not ready to be found.