I'm spending yet another night in my room by myself, trying to figure out how to get out of the hole, as it steadily sinks deeper.
It seems that it's actually much easier than I imagined to blur your way out of people's minds into just another face, despite at least trying to reflect the unique person you are. I'm currently a first year in hall (dorms) which would seem like the easiest place to start.
Where I live
I live on a floor with about 14 people. I like two. Three have done nothing to offend me, three don't speak English and the others no-one is even sure they live there. It's ironic that the people you end up liking the most when you first join up are the ones that will let you down. Today's case in point (and definite straw on camel back): I wonder around the floor, pretending to like people, trying to make an effort and I see everyone has a ticket for the Christmas dinner. They didn't put them under our doors last time, and I didn't get one. "No, Katy got all of ours," I was told. But Katy lives right next door to me, my door was open and I've been in studying all day. "You didn't ask for one." Yes, but Katy, no-one else did either. "No, they did, we talked about it two weeks ago." Two weeks? Two weeks and you couldn't even ask me, even though I live next door to you? The anger that welled up meant I just left before I said something that everyone will regret. What annoyed me most is that the two people I do like also got tickets from her, so I might not even be able to go with them if the whole table is booked.
I've been the third, fourth, fifth and sixth wheel when going out to club nights with music I don't even enjoy, all in the name of effort, building bridges with my floormates. I'm the one that always gets the first insult when things don't go exactly to plan because "I'm holding everything up" or "Why would we want to go there?" or "What's wrong with you tonight?"
Where I work
I'm a computer scientist. It's not like I expected an abundance of geek girls. I've counted 4 on our course, and I'm pretty sure at least one is taking it as an open unit, and will leave by February. What I did expect was to find likeminded males, who appreciating the manly geek crap I do, action movies, games, eclectic music tastes. Except I can't meet them. The ones I have I'm not sure I like. Lectures are silent, boring things. There's no interaction, no personality and no soul. At school, each class had an identity. A group of people that created an image, being fun, being a nightmare for the teacher, being high-achievers. You could reveal yourself to the group through discussion with other people and through questions and answers with the teacher. Lectures don't provide that easy outlet. There isn't a central meeting place at my Uni as such, the union is ten minutes away so people just go home. There is no meeting, only passing by and facial recognition. The people I know are people who I met in the first week of term, when we did get a chance to sit and talk, when interaction just filled up the time. I would quite like to socialise with them and get to know them better, yet everytime I make an attempt to get everyone to go out, one of them will sink the boat and cause the whole mission to abort. I'm planning these things like military operations now, thinking who I'll talk to, pondering on how I'll approach them, where we can all go which makes everyone happy. Nothing works.
What I'm left with
Pretty much the same I had when I started Uni. I have no girlfriend (this is not a surprise given my shy with the opposite sex nature) but have yet to find somebody who I would even consider asking out to dinner (this is). I spend my day walking from building to building by myself, only talking to people for the brief 2 minutes outside the theatre, and then going our separate ways afterwards. I come home to people I don't like and another night talking to my friends on the Internet from school, the ones I still count as my best friends, the friends I have had the most fun with since I started, despite the fact I haven't seen them for two months. We're almost at the end of the first period. I've scored one good friend, two friends and 6 aquiantances. In a University of 10000, and seeing them only for a very tiny fraction of my day. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you can feel lonely whilst having all the opportunity in the world.