In the middle

It's stream of consciousness time, when the rules of grammar get to fly out the window:
So, my best friend comes up to visit her family this weekend, and I'm sitting on their living room couch while we eat dinner, and I realize this may be the last trip to her house for awhile...which we both decide is survivable before returning to our food, but then I get behind the wheel of my car and I'm driving home in the darkening summer evening while the foothills disappear beneath a slate blue blanket of thunderheads and I realize that it's not okay and I'm not okay and I don't feel like trying to be okay right now...so I make it through the front door and up the stairs to my room where I curl up like a snail on my bed and sob into my fiancee's left shoulder.

These moments sabotage me; I never know when they will creep past the borders of consciousness, but nothing is safe from triggering an episode. The right song, a change in the weather, or a poignant poem could kick a hole through my carefully erected wall, and quite a bit of flotsam has gathered behind it.

Deep down, I realize that all of us will adapt: my friend and I will thrive via IM, email and internet phones; my fiancee and I will cherish every one of our visits, and we'll be too busy to pine away during the interim; my family will adapt after awhile, and the months between trips home will fly. Still, I'm incredibly nervous looking at it now, looming before me in one giant block instead of the series of smaller hurdles it actually is. I worry about making friends all over again, about keeping the ones I have (what if they find newer, closer, better friends?? shrieks the insecure voice in my head), and about making sure my relationships with the people I love remain the same. I realize that the distance will require flexibility, but I would be devastated if new distances grew between my fiancee and I, or between my family and I, and so on. Again, I am fully aware that this will not happen if the parties involved do not want it to; however, knowing and accepting are two different things. The main reason why I fear change is because I have ridiculously strong insecurities about my relationships with people; I view major change as a force with the potential to jeopardize those connections, so I fear it instead of seeing the good it could create (e.g., giving my friends a reason to visit England, or making me a better email correspondent).

I'm also worried that I'll turn back into the person I was a few years ago: self-contained and isolated, despite the extroverted behavior -- a loner yearning for friends yet unable to drop her defenses for any who came along. I'd hate to isolate myself in grad school, but oh how I loathe getting to know new people. I always feel uncomfortable introducing myself and going through nine circles of hell trying to be comfortable enough to be me around strangers. Unfortunately, this fear perpetuates itself: I avoid getting to know people, then make no friends, thereby convincing me that trying to make friends is pointless...Again, I know this is in my control, but old habits die hard, and I always curl into myself when things get rough. Walls are easier to build than bridges.

Carp, carp, carp. That's all I do on here lately, and I apologize. This has turned into a pseudo-journal for me, so it's a forum for airing my daily angst. I'll try to revive the political commentary and humor, really I will! It's frustrating: whenever I'm in the middle of a huge transition, it always feels insurmountable. As soon as I step out from the middle of it, I realize how truly insignificant the whole process is -- but that never changes how I feel when the next one arrives. Ah, life in your 20s. Can I turn 30 yet? :)