Ballroom Dancing

This past weekend I returned to my little old house in my little old town. Granted, I will be going home in three days time, but I wanted to go with my parents who were traveling up north to Green Bay to visit my sister. So I pounced on this escape. What I learned while I was gone amazed me.

Since I moved into the dorms I have noticed that something wasn't quite right with the people that are here. At the beginning I thought that I would be able to figure out what was wrong and take whatever steps were needed to make it seem right. But oh how time does pass. I think when we got here, people were more tolerant of other people, we all were more open to the idea of hanging out with whoever because we didn't know them. That is how I met a good majority of all my friends here. However, time has the effect of realization.

When I arrived here I knew maybe three people. All my good friends were left behind or went off in a different direction. Since most of my friends were a good distance away, and parking passes here are far too expensive, I was cut off from the people I have known for years. This severance is what forced me to reach out to others, to befriend those in the same situation, and a few who were not. Which, on a side note, those people who came to school with all their friends...I personally think that there is a bit of growing up that needs to be done. Moving on. So I now had friends and we did pretty much everything together. We just dove in and life seemed back to normal. It wasn't.

It seems that you cannot just dive into friendships. Let me make this clear. I am not saying that you should refuse to try and make new friends unless you take it at a very slow pace, I am saying that you cannot assume that you will instantly be the best of friends. I made this mistake. I thought that the people I was hanging out with could easily replace the ones that I left behind or the ones that left me behind. I even saw some of my old friends within my new friends. Which I think is a bad connection to make. More on this later. Friendships need to be built, not made. Friendships require years, not seconds. Friendships are a dance, not a leap. Friendships are learned, something you are not born with.

So you cannot make friendships in the seconds it takes to leap, because of this I believe it is obvious why you should not look for old friends within new ones. I, as I have stated, am guilty of this. A couple of my new friends I saw resemblances of the old in. But when you see someone you know in someone you don't, you start to think you actually do know the person. If the person you see, is someone you have known for years then you start to treat the new as the old. You attempt the fine-tuned dance of the waltz with someone that likes to tango. To put it simply, you act like you would with the old, and it isn't what the new is used to.

Now after three months of waltzing the tango, I have stepped on too many feet and now my partner is pissed. This in turn has made me stop dancing. I am sitting on the sidelines, watching others dance their dances.

When I was sitting in my friends dorm room back home, I came to this realization. I realized that you cannot replace old friends, nor can you ever forget them. The old friends are the ones that you spent the first eighteen years of your life with, building memories and learning to dance. Now I find myself attempting the fine-tuned humor with my new friends, only to realize that it is fine-tuned to another person. I think this is why my friendships here are not working, and if one of you reading this happens to be one of those people, I have two things to say to you. First, I am sorry. Second, be more open. If you are reading this and you are one of my age old dancers, I have this to say to you; remember that one time...