Oh please come dive in puddles with me

I keep wanting to post about how alone and depressed I’ve felt lately, but every day there’s a bunch of interesting and non-sad stuff to post about.  So I guess that’s a good thing.

Today my 465 exam went a little better than I expected, which is good.  I hung out with Jeremy a bunch and we got some CSE428 homework done too.  We also played frisbee with Konst and Kevin, and some of our neighbors -- two of them being 7 or 8 year old girls -- wanted to play.  They were cute little kids.  One of the times when Jeremy threw the frisbee into the woods (which only happened one or two or seventy times), the girls insisted on getting it out themselves.  After a few minutes I walk over to the edge and ask if it’s lost.  They say no.  I get closer and see that it’s stuck in the low branch of a tree.  "Oh, it’s just stuck in the tree," I say.  "The jagerbush tree," says one of the kids.  Jagerbush!

And my mom is the best.  She clips articles out of newpapers and magazines and mails them to me.  I just got an envelope full of articles about things like Bill O’Reilly, linux, and wind power.

Today I also extracted several choice quotes from my friends:

"Kevin, how do you make hamburgers?  ’Cause the way I make hamburgers, it sucks."
- Konstantin

Me: The printer just swallowed my print job.
Me: I told the printer to print, and it says it received the job, but nothing’s printing.
Me: Don’t you care??
Jeremy: Care about what?

Jeremy: ...I just think all OSes should come with Perl.
Me: All real OSes do.
Jeremy: What, Windows is a real OS, just not a real good one.

My away message: exams and stuff
Mark’s IM to me later in the day: and stuff eh... I see what you’re up to there

But the thing is... all of a sudden, all my older siblings are married.  OK, not quite all of a sudden, but all 3 of them within the span of 3 or 4 years, and that seems pretty sudden.  That leaves just me and Nick.  (And Maria, but she’s only 10.)  We’re both far more shy than could be considered healthy.

And my friends are getting engaged left and right.  Nate a year or so ago, John a month or two ago, Johnny a while back, Kris a few days ago, and there’s a couple more (who shall remain nameless) on the "probably soon" list.  And I have two friends named Josh who both got married within the last year.

There are a few highly predictable responses to this.  Some people will say, "You’re young; enjoy being single and independent while you can."  My general response to that: either "grow up," "kiss my butt," or "go discourage someone else."  I’ve been not married for nearly 23 years; I’ve had plenty of that, thankyouverymuch.  And I have never been a typical kid.  I’m not into partying, I’m certainly not into freaking dating, and I’m honestly not interested in "meeting lots of girls" or "having lots of girl friends."  All the supposed "benefits" of being single are things that I’m not interested in at all.

That rant was only tangential, though.  It’s not actually that I want to be married right now.  It’s just that I’m completely alone now, and being around lots of people in various stages of getting married casts my solitude in stark contrast.  More to the point, it just makes me sad.  I know and I believe that everything is in God’s hands, but that does not quell the longing for human companionship at every sunset and on every long drive and every time I’m around everyone else who has someone.

[Achtung: this blog is a place where I vent, and it’s a diary of sorts where I reveal those personal things that I feel like revealing about myself.  Public comments are a huge part of what I cherish about this blog, but they can also work against my ability to control the level personal detail that is manifest here.  In particular, a person who is very close to me, for the sake of argument let’s call this person "mom," such a person is probably too close to me and knows me too well to be able to make a public reply that will be considered kosher by me, on a post like this.  In that case (and also for other readers of my ramblings here), personal replies to highly personal posts like this one are more than welcome via email.  Finally, this post is basically me feeling really alone and needing to express that somehow.  I don’t need to hear that "it will all be ok," and as well-intentioned as one may be in saying that, it’s going to come off as belittling and implying naivety to me.]