The Power of Friendship

    Thirty years ago, give or take a few weeks, when I graduated high school, I did not have any goals in mind.  I did, however, have a plan to figure everything out.  I was going to community college and explore as much as I could to find out just what I wanted to do.  I wanted to write, but I also wanted to do something more as a career to start out on.  I also had many other interests I wanted to try out.  A cornerstone of my plan was to maintain at least one friendship from high school until I could develop new circles of friends.  You see, I had a very sheltered childhood.  I was never allowed to do anything or go anywhere without my mother.  Since she didn't like to go much of anywhere, I was basically stuck going shopping with her.  The only exception was school.  It was only there that I felt free to be myself.  Even when I wasn't allowed to go to many outside school functions, I still felt freer there than anywhere else.  This meant I had no training in social activities.  I was hoping that with an old friend helping me out, I could finally become socially aware and acceptable.  None of this happened.  Due to some mix-ups, I never got the chance to explore many of my interests.  Almost none.  While I had a few friends who I wanted to be with, I was never able to get closet to them to ask for help, and I didn't make any strong connections with anyone new.  My friends transferred after one year, while I stayed behind.  It didn't really hit me until my last semester when I had a panic attack.  I seem to get them every few years.  I don't know how I managed to go to class that first day, trapped inside my own head and all of my fears.  I somehow graduated and was going to the University of Kentucky with a possible major in journalism.  I was hoping to finally explore those other interests and get out of my shell.  It didn't happen.  I was forced to cancel my plans and switch to another school.  That turned out to be the worst mistake in my life.  It was probably the only school in the state at that time that didn't have any student run publication.  I was forced to switch majors to English, the closest thing they had.  The school did not have the outlets I was searching for to explore my other interests.  I wasn't even told who my advisor was until the start of my second semester there, after I wasn't able to leave after my disastrous first semester.  Not only was he not in the English department, but I was never even able to meet him until the end of that second semester.  We never hit it off, and I barely ever talked to him.  I hated that place so much that I never did try to form any bonds with my fellow students or my instructors.  Don't get me wrong.  It was probably a good school for many people, it just wasn't the right fit for me on so many levels.  It was so wrong for me that I had I to go an extra semester to make all the requirements for my major and the school.  It was then that I decided to go to graduate school, since I didn't feel like I had learned enough.  Unfortunately, planning graduate school a few weeks before a December graduation is not a good idea, especially if one doesn't have the help of their school.  Suffice to say, I wasn't able to even halfway complete the application process before the deadline. After graduation, I tried to find a job, but without the proper training and experience. journalism was not going to be my field.  I had lost interest in my chosen profession, and I didn't want to pursue it anymore.  Someone had turned in a favor to get me a job.  I was forced to take it.  How they could ever think it was a good fit for me?  I didn't have the training, qualifications, or even any interest in it.  I left after a month for those, and other reasons.  A few months after that, I saw a wedding announcement in the paper about one of my old friends.  He had gotten a job and left the area and gotten married a few weeks previously.  It triggered another panic attack.  Here he was, well ahead in his life, and there I was, a big nothing, forgotten by everyone.  While I did try to find a job, I never found one.  I rarely left the house.  I never learned how to socialize, so I wasn't missing much besides my own life.  I did this for years, until someone offered me the chance to open my own store.  I didn't have the training or interest to do so, but I literally didn't have any other choice.  I tried to make it work, with the possibility of it leading to the path I really wanted.  Unfortunately, every time I thought I was making headway, something would happen that would take it all away.  I should have closed many time over the years, but I managed to stay open, mostly because I didn't have anything else I could do.  I had ideas, but the world around me was changing too fast for me to keep up and decide on any one choice.  After many years of barely keeping on, I decided to try social media as a way to drum up business.  I just wanted to create a page for it on Facebook, but I would up getting on it myself, my lack of any friends notwithstanding.  I waited a few months before trying to find any of my old friends, too scared to see what would happen.  But I found them, after some wrong turns.  At first, I was feeling many conflicting emotions.  I was angry that they seemed to have forgotten about me, even when I never forgot them.  I was jealous that they got to have a life, when I was almost jobless and without a family of my own.  I was miserable that I wasn't there to share in their lives and help them out.  I was crying randomly whenever I thought about what could have been.  But I was happy.  I finally got to tell them what they meant to me and what I felt should have happened in our lives.  One had recently went back to school so he could get a better job.  One had become a teacher, even though I never knew he any inkling of going into teaching.  Another was working in the administration at a relatively local university, well outside of what I thought he would be doing.  Then something crystallized in me.  I could go to graduate school, get my degree so I could work as some sort of instructor or author in residence at a university, since there is no way I could teach children. Then, I would have the freedom to write what I wanted without the fear of not having a job.  I was most comfortable in academic surroundings, and that could lead to finally learning about socializing.  It would be tough to get in, but I knew I could do it.  As a stopgap, someone suggested I take a few online classes at another school that I could get into quicker and easier.  It wasn't the type of degree or format I wanted, but I took them up on the offer.  I got in and did fairly well.  I was setting myself up to apply to the University of Kentucky and finally fulfill a childhood dream.  I missed the deadline the first time around, but I made it for the fall 2020 start.  Everything was finally going right in my life.  Unfortunately, I wasn't accepted.

    Now, I don't know what to do.  It will be a months to apply again and almost a year before I know if I get in.  In the meantime, I have no other plan.  I could try to apply to another school, but most of the creative writing programs I have found are residencies.  I need to be on a campus to get the socialization I need to progress.  Furthermore, the classes I have already taken probably won't transfer, at least of the schools I've seriously looked at. This means that all of the time and money I used for my online classes will have been wasted unless I try to get the regular English Masters that I wasn't planning on getting or using.  I could finish that program, but it will be hard.  I don't know if I can find enough classes that are integral to my goals and that I have enough interest in to become eligible in time to take my exit exam next spring.  If I don't, I might be forced to take it during my first semester at Kentucky, about the time of my finals. Even if I can take the exam next spring, I might not find a proctor to administer it with the outbreak in the background.  This doesn't even take into account if I don't pass it on my first try.  Furthermore, I had decided to finally close my store, the day before the lockdown was declared.  My store doesn't have the capabilities to function during the lockdown, so I haven't been able to sell off my inventory or even find someone to help clear everything away to put into some sort of storage.  Even when I would be able to partially open, I still might not be able to open under the additional restrictions.  I might have to wait until everything is lifted before I can officially close up.  Of course, I would want another job I could start waiting for me.  However, there isn't any job market at the moment due to the outbreak.  This is going to make finding a job much harder.  Compounding this is my need to find something that I am qualified for, interested in, and designed to further my goal.  Most of the jobs I'm qualified for, I have no interest in.  Most of the thing I'm interested in, I either am not fully qualified for or not really found locally.  I'm not even sure what would constitute a job best designed to help me in my goal.  Then there is the fact that I would have to leave after I year when I go back to school and leave the area.  Once I start back, I will need to be as much of a full time student as I can, hopefully working for the university on a form of trial basis or something.  It might not be fair to my employer without them knowing this, which could make it harder to find a job.  It's so stupid.  It took me thirty years to figure out what I want to do with my life.  I put off almost everything else trying to find this goal, leaving my life behind while the world continued to move forward.  Now that I have my goal, I'm not sure how I can get there.  I don't want anything else.  If I had only stuck to my plan, keeping my friends by my side, I would be a successful writer by now, married and worrying about getting my kids into college instead of myself.  I might not still have those old friends, but I would have newer ones.  I passed on so many opportunities, thinking I didn't need them or they weren't right for me.  Now, I'm afraid I'm too old to be starting my life, but I still deserve to have one.  I just want to be.  I just want my dreams to be fulfilled.  I just don't want to be alone.  I want a friend.