Who Knew Britney Spears Could Be Food for Thought?

Wow. Today has been one helluva. Many thoughts, disconnected, as per their usual shipment:

A. Wisdom Teeth out+Drugs+Period=bitchiest Angela ever known to man

B. Above equation may also equal have some (or much?) bearing on the following sensations that have been itching under my skin all day:

i. have I been trying to grow up too fast? have I succeeded in "growing up"? if no, will I ever? and do I want to? and if yes, do I regret that? I was walking through the freshman dorms on my way home from the library, just before midnight, bushes and buildings awash in the depressingly clinical light of streetlamps, and passed a boy and a girl walking, talking, in the way that they do at that age. my age. and the full emotional impact of Britney Spears' "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman" (quite weighty for teen pop, in my opinion) hit me at that moment. I preyed on their conversation for a moment, insatiable in my need to know what it was exactly that I was (am?) missing. I caught snippets, and realized, equally predatorily,  that I was completely uninterested. I've evolved, or at least, am evolving. The thing is, I don't quite know which stage I am at. In general, I feel either bored and stymied or inexperienced and grasping--never quite in my zone of proximal development, to steal a term of Vygotsky's. I can hardly relate to people who are my own age, yet in my classes, I find it difficult to relate to the married-with-children biblical scholars. In my own apartment, I can barely communicate with my roommates, let alone interact on any sort of heart-to-heart level (and would I even want to, were it communicatively possible? good question). And my old friends, whom I call "old" simply because they've been around the longest and are the best, I call old because they're also moving on to different stages in this great play of life, and we're just sort of splitting up, like a fissioning cell--it's actually natural and productive, but it still seems kind of painful. This all adds up to a strange limbo-ness. I feel in-between. It's a bit sad. I have been thinking a lot lately about why I find transience so comforting. And it's not so much that I've been theorizing why--I think that it can be unequivocally traced to the abrupt and comprehensive moves that my family made growing up. In making friendships, I was confronted with the knowledge that I could either make friends and simply end up leaving them in who knew how many months, or that I could forego the pain of making any only to lose them--and thereby forego the pleasure of actually having friendship as well. I'm a bit ashamed and puzzled to say it, but I generally chose the latter. I think that ultimately, I was just afraid. And I took the easy way out, which is not admirable at all. However, I always had friends--I need friends, I love them--and despite whatever unconscious psychological barriers I built, I have always been just enough or done just enough to have and keep them--though hardly much at all, I'm afraid. Anyhow, at the moment, I feel that I need to adapt to this new stage that I am at, and make a conscious decision to actually try to befriend people. I am so happy that my favorite friend EVER is going to marry me, but I think for his sake I should try to make some compadres so that I don't go crazy, nor drive him crazy for always wanting to be with him. Also, I need to hone my humor skills. I used to be very funny. What HAPPPENED? I have become a buffoon. I would rather be... unbuffoonish. So, in round-about conclusion, I am going to try to develop some people skills! They were sharpened at one point, but have since become rusty. New puzzles require new solutions, so I suppose I'll be experimenting (in what I hope doesn't transform into a test subjects way...). K. Over and out, buckos.

If you started at the beginning, and chowed through all of that text to reach this sentence, I, as sovereign of this honorable blog, commend you HIGHLY. Bravo!!! :)