rough start

Okay, so I didn't really have fun at MIT this weekend. In fact, it was mostly traumatizing. It was a very rough start, but I'm still alive I suppose.

I got there, and the first half of the first day my mom stayed with me, but then she said she was going to leave me for the rest of the weekend so it was more of my experience, which was alright and necessary, I suppose.

I really like the campus, and I really like the education there, and I know it's what I want academically, and it turns out that the kids there aren't really smarter than me (and by the way I'm a semifinalist in the presidential scholar program, top 500 in the nation, but I have to make one more all-important cut; I'm still waiting on the NMS). I went to a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities) presentation for the astronomy/planetary sciences UROP's, and I started getting so excited because there are so many astronomy opportunities there (like upper classmen can go to Arizona every spring break to use their awesome telescopes to do research), and I felt that great pressure of excitement in me. So I liked the school a lot (although it was rather cold there).

Everything else kind of unfolded and fell apart. I met up with my host, who took me back to where I was supposed to be staying, and the girls that were staying with all knew each other really well from a summer camp. They were really nice, but all the time I was with him I was this awkward third wheel. All they talked about was how they were all going to get a suite together next year (obviously not including me).

I'm not going to go into everything that happened during the weekend, because much of it just isn't important. I stayed with the girls from my dorm for part of the time, but I ended up getting shuttled all over the place, sleeping in this girl's dorm who they knew from their summer camp etc. It was just really weird, and I was very unincluded, and I felt so alone.

I was trying to be really outgoing for the weekend (and I really was being outgoing). I introduced myself to a lot of people, and I hung out with different people for long periods of time. But everyone, no matter how nice they were, seemed to know each other, and none of them really clicked with me at all. And the more energy I put into being outgoing and trying to find friends, the more desperate and drained I felt when I really didn't get much out of it but that familiar third-wheel feeling.

I always feel inferior, to everyone, in almost every way.

It was better when I just didn't try to be outgoing, and just did everything on my own, and didn't try to fit in with a group of people that I really just didn't know. I never could really figure out how or why everyone knew people, but part of it was that most of them had other people from their city get in, and I was the only person from Montana to even get into MIT this year.

So 4 a.m. on Friday morning I got dragged with them to talk to these stupid fraternity boys next door that were really annoying, and everyone was kind of ignoring me and the fact that I was falling apart, so when I realized I was going to break into tears because everything felt like it was exponentially increasing every instant, every bad thing and insecurity and fear in me, and I told them I was going back to our dorm, and my host told me to just ring the doorbell, which was really inconsiderate of her since she knew the combination and it was only like twenty feet away. Had anyone really looked at me, it would have been obvious that I was losing it, but I guess I'm glad they didn't, but the point is that whether I was losing it or not, they just didn't look at me at all. I was just this ghost that followed people around and tried to strike up conversations that weren't really my own. Every conversation with anyone I talked to all weekend felt fake to me, because I felt like everyone I talked to was either very different from me, or really just didn't care about me and wouldn't have noticed if I'd suddenly gone away, or at least wouldn't have bothered to come back to find me.

On friday morning my mind kind of lost its last shred of sanity, and I just thought screw it all, and I found my way back to a bathroom, and I sat on the toilet and cried for a long time. It was mostly because this CPW thing is a preview at college, and what I am afraid will happen, what I know will happen, at college happened this weekend. I was alone and I fell apart. I felt so suicidal that night. I realized I can't do it. I can't go to college, whether it's at MIT or MSU. I was losing it so completely that all I wanted that morning was for someone to come and take me away and put me in a hospital. It was so terrible, because again there was no escape. Killing myself would be worse. Not going to college wouldn't work (all my friends would still go). No matter what I do, I have to leave, and things have to change, and I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.

I guess that is the crux of the issue, and it is what pushed me to fall apart again last night while trying to suppress the pretty terrible memories of my emotions this weekend. I really just don't think I can do this. And I'm not sure that I have an alternative. And I'm not sure what will happen to me when I am forced into a situation like I was in this weekend, but it is permanant. I'm not sure where I will go or how I will cope. I need people to take care of me sometimes. They can still do that over the phone, but nobody will be there to notice or care when I'm falling apart in the frat house at 4 a.m.

I can't go to college. I can't do it. I'll fall apart. I'm not stable enough.

If I have to go, it will be to MIT. But at the end of this weekend, I didn't feel like I could get out of the shower, much less out of th door, much less out of my state and my friends and my life and into oblivion.