I find that I've been taking friendship much less seriously of late.

Maybe its because its grade 12 and I don't know who I'll keep in contact with.
Maybe it's the repetition of school, having to encounter those I'd rather not know everyday.
Maybe I'm just fed up with everyone.

I guess it's like that in large groups, there are so many people that you can't know them all really well. But do the friendships I make really matter? I know that some part of me resists friendship while another embraces it. My resistance comes from the small disbelief that someone would like a person such as myself. Complexities and confusions.

I've drifted apart from so many 'close friends' that I really don't see the point in keeping any and it's revealed just how two-faced some people can be. They're quick to say that I'm one of their close friends, but leave very little evidence, if any at all, of this being so. I'd be better off doing as I am now and distancing myself from others in small ways. Either by not spending too much time with them, talking with them for only a short while, or generally make it look like I'm content with passively listening to others' conversations or fiddling with something by myself (which I generally am).

It's not that I'm spiteful, I just don't feel comfortable getting too close to some people because I can just predict that some point in the future my impression of them will change in a way I'd rather it had not have.

I know that some people are holding me back and leading me astray and it's killing me to have to go along with it because I'm bound to them somehow through the group until I leave school. It's a feeling of being trapped, of having dug a hole too deep with not way to climb out. I want to leave them all completely, but I also realise that I need them in a way to avoid looking awkwardly alone.

When I'm with a group of friends, say, <10 or so, I usually feel a little on the outside because there are these insufferable cliques within the group. Certain people that will always hang around each other and in the nature of cliques become like each other. There are the nerds, the intelligent, witty kids, the chorale kids, the girls, the couples. There's no one that I could stick myself to, so I'm left apart. Drifting, and frustrated.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with being alone with myself. Maybe all I need is one or two friends, family, and God. I've always been content with being alone in familiar environments. If I'm comfortable with it, where's the harm? I know that in being this way, I am partly shielded from the pain of becoming distanced from a close friend because really, I'm only 17 and the friend's I've made may as well have been right and appropriate for keeping me content at school, but lets face it; they probably won't become much more than times to reminisce about. Friendship is a cycle that we endure.

And perhaps if friendship isn't the best thing for me, then I'd just like for the whole world to smile at me in passing, maybe wave, but otherwise leave me to my own devices.

I think that's all I would want.


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Aside from that, I received my new L-series lens on monday, I got my provisional license on tuesday, wednesday passed without incident and I got to take some nice photos, thursday I learnt how to properly use my external flash in conjunction with shutter speed, aperture and my subject, I won first prize in the Lutheran Education of Queensland senior art competition with one of my photographs that I'd have never thought worthy and received and cheque for $250 and on friday, I took more photos.

And I've decided to be baptised for the first time because the literal first baptism meant nothing to me because I was a baby.