Parakeets and College

So today I tagged along to petco while my brother got a corn snake. I got distracted, however, by the adorable falpping birds in this glass cage. I'd never really had a pet of my own (only family pets) and now, after seeing the parakeets at Petco, I really want one. Problem is, I'm going to college in a year. That got me thinking about college. All this time, I've been excited about going and "meeting new people" and "growing up". I wanted to live in the dorms, but today I realized something. I don't like being around people all the time. I need time to myself and living in the dorms would be a nightmare for me.

And that made me realize something else, that college isn't this idealic "growing up" period or that much different then high school. Other than academics/living on your own, it's the same type of people, just more of them. Ever since I became a Christian I have struggled like no other to have friends at my school. My walk with God has isolated me from people at school because I never find real Christians at my school. Granted, I'm probably not looking as hard as I should, but still. I've prayed for one reliable, faithful friend but I haven't been able to find one yet. There was this one girl, Brooke, but she is Messianic and I'm Chrisitan, our difference in how and what we believed in created an unbreakable barrier. We are equally faithful, but in two different mindsets on who God is. My walk has even isolated me from girls in my Youth Group and I only really manage to talk to the counclers and two other girls about keeping me accountable just because... In all honesty, I don't think the other girls would hold me accountable to the extent that I want to be held (which is probably "extreme" to them.) I know that John 15:19 says "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.", but it's just exhausting. Sometimes I just want to be the girl that cusses and parties and has boyfriends, but I'm not. I can't be that girl. And I can't connect with people who are like that without back up.

How will college be any different? I plan to go to a small college near home because we can't afford anywhere else. If it were up to me, I would head off to another country or something, but it's not. These people are people I've gone to school with and how will they be any different then the people that already go to my school? Sure there will be well over 7,000 undergraduates and graduates there, but isn't that just multiplying the amount of fakers/and lost people? I'm not mature/good whatever enough to stand with God without some other form of support in a room full of lost people, I'll be pulled down. And THAT is how I feel everyday when I'm at school. I don't want to feel that way in College, I wanted college to be different. To be new. To be fun and memorable and not freaking miserable like High School has been! I know people who will look back on their High School years as the best years of their lives; I'll look back with hate, disdain, and misery. I hate High School and why will college be any different? I can only afford to go to a secular college and even if I secluded myself to a Bible or Christian college, there are plenty of fakers there too!

I don't want to go to college any more. I don't even want to go out in the world anymore if I'm just going to stand alone and be persecuted. Where is the joy in that? I always here about "joy in the hard times" well my "hard times" have been going on for years and I see no end in sight. How can I be joyful in that? Why would God make me stand by myself in my school for years on end? To test my endurance, my Faith? I don't know. I just know that it sucks and it's miserable and I hate it. I just want a true, Christian, Devoted friend. Is that too much to ask? And how will going off to a "new place" and "growing up" change that?

Sorry for the non-uplifting blog, but it's just how I feel at this moment.