It's obvious.

Delicious blank space, how I missed thee.

I just made it through my second week of summer school only to be afflicted by a tiny, annoying, scathing sickness in the back of my throat, muddying up my thoughts with nausea/delirium/probably-a-fever.

So what has happened to me in the last month, I ask myself.  Well?

My transition back to Santa Barbara was not nearly as smooth as I envisioned.  Fairly rough, actually.  I overlooked a few details regarding Psych degree requirements and I will not be readily accepted into the department.  It's not the biggest loss, although my mind was fairly set on that for the last several months at community college.  As one might expect in lieu of crushing news, I found myself frustrated and flustered, scrambling to seek out some bureaucratic loophole that would let me slip into the program.  I initially tried to work with my advisors, seeing what options I have to use the system, make appeals, beg desperately, kiss ass, in order to get into the program.  When those prospects failed me, I tried to exploit the system in my own naive way.  Of course that failed as well, the massive UCSB-hammer falling from the sky and smashing my dreams.  Kidding.

While there's still a slim chance of that particular major panning out, I realized I had more pressing issues to deal with.  As a condition of my pending reinstatement, I have to go back to school this summer regardless of my degree.  That is, if I ever want to see that sweet piece of validating paper from UCSB.  So I picked some classes that fulfill the last of my writing requirements, uncertain as to what major I'll end up choosing this time around.

So here I am, back in school yet in limbo all the same.  I find this bitter taste of "not getting what I want" laced with an unusual amount of optimism.  I suppose it's a combination of all the sweet fruits of being *back* in this little town I still identify with.  I am in physical proximity to some of my best friends (of course I left a few behind as well. Fuck.), I live with four amazing people.  I am meeting new people in my classes.  I enjoy reading and being "forced" to read, discovering new avenues of literature that I would never think to find on my own.  I feel engaged, busy, occupied.  I feel like I'm growing, or rather I will have grown significantly by the end of the academic year.

Well that's what is happening, but I guess I'd like to touch on a few things I've learned over the past few weeks.

Lately I've been hitting some obstacles with friends.  I suppose this is an inevitability, and the real question is whether or not we can overcome them.  I suppose it's not unlike being in a "serious" relationship with someone, but please excuse me if you find that to be melodramatic.  I'm merely suggesting that I approach friendship with a degree of sincerity, trying to be forthcoming and achieve higher levels of understanding.  Isn't that what everyone wants with that special someone?

Digression aside, I'm at the point in my life where I am compelled to be completely honest with people.  Unfortunately, I've missed the mark on this a few times and it may have cost me a friendship.  I believe it boils down to the means in which I expressed myself.  Thanks to my friends, I've learned a few things about my communication style that may have come across as unfair.

The thing I like about writing e-mails is that it allows me to say all the difficult things in one fell swoop.  I can't chicken out halfway through, and I think it gives me a certain amount of time to really think about what I want to say.  I get frustrated with myself when I awkwardly fumble to express something that I might be able to write out more eloquently.

That being said, it's not exactly the most fair method of communication.  It's an attack.  A list of dismissive attacks.  Even if I do my best to acknowledge any other perspectives, a message like this is really just a daunting wall of text.  What could I really expect from that?  It doesn't allow the recipient to really make any defense because it's all thrown on at once.  Even if it was not my intent, it seems that each point I make is not open to debate.  Not to mention, it is hard to come up with any particularly thought-out rebuttals when you read from paragraph to paragraph.

In short, it was a cowardly, easy way out.  And I understand that it's easier to just ignore it.

Unfortunately this has filled me with a degree of regret.  This method has worked wonders for me in the past, why not now?  Maybe it's because I didn't consider all the factors at play and I most likely lack that true empathy needed to be more understanding.  Maybe I didn't realize I might have said some hurtful things that I thought were true, but at any rate it's still a mystery to me.

And the enigmatic dilemma goes on.  I'm only starting to realize now that I don't know what I want and this is causing some of my friendships to suffer.  Even though it has come to the forefront of my attention, I'm still finding that I lack the words to fix what I may have broken.  Boo-fucking-hoo, right?  Yeah, it is pretty sad.

But I'm learning.