I've gone every night.
My friends, what friends I have, tell me I'm a masochist. And they're right. There's no reason to keep going back to the meetings, sitting quietly and letting the sounds of law and performance lull me into numbness. Numb until I return to the dorm, to silence and memories-- and dreams.
Last night, during the brief respite of my day at home, my relatives came to visit. My cousin, two years younger than me, a thin blond girl dressed in the latest designer clothes. Too thin-- much, much too thin. Apparently anorexia, like so many other diseases, runs in the family. She's even thinner than I ever managed, and I don't eat.
Seeing her was a reminder of how much I tried to destroy myself. First I did it with starvation, and anorexia. Then I tried cutting, letting blood wash away everything. And now? I bury myself under work.
But with mock trial over, my last trial finished, there's no work to lose myself in. Before me there is only a seemingly endless stretch of time, and nothing to fill it with.
There's only so much you can do by yourself. And by myself is how I always am. I don't meet people easily, I never have... and until I was pushed aside, there was no reason to put forward the effort here.
And now, it feels like I've come too late. I have acquaintances, but never friends. Much as it pains me to say it, I miss high school. It took four years, but at least at the end I could say there were a few people who knew me.
I can't say that anymore. And I don't feel like there's anything I can do about it. The only people who even associated me were forced to, my teammates. And when they wrote the pairings... they took the eight people they thought could win. Then they took the three people they wanted with them.
So where does that leave me?
I'm tired of being on the outside looking in.