Difficulties Move From Potential to Reality

today was rough. i don't know how else to put it. i woke up at about 7:30 after only five hours of sleep and then i went about my business. first in order was my dr's appointment which started at 8:30 and ended around 10:00. it was from there that i went straight to the pool to commence my second day of work. i was full of zeal and i worked very hard, but the work was long and strenuous. first i dried an entire olympic sized pool AND a standard size pool from rain water that had fallen yesterday so we could paint. next of course came the painting. we painted the lines on the bottom of the pool, which sounds easy at first, but you must consider that these lines have to be as straight as can be. we were also painting black on white which allows for no mess-ups. in total i think i painted 225 meters today which took aproximately five hours to complete. after that i went home and showered off, trying to get the paint off of my hands which proved very difficult as the paint is made especially for the bottom of pools. once i was all washed up i went to church to try and practice bass for this sunday, but the office was already closed and the bass i'm going to use is in the office. since i was already on that side of town i decided to go see what the boggs' were up to. mrs. boggs was the only one home, but she invited me in for a drink and a chat to check up on my progress at school. she told me that some animal (probably a fox) killed two of three of her rabbits which is pretty crazy. it killed one by biting it in the head when it stuck it out through it's pen to eat some grass. anyways, after that i went home and crashed. i took about an hour nap before i was awoken by my mom wanting me to help move our old 800lbs wood stove that we are FINALLY getting rid of. straight after that i went over to brittany's house to watch a movie with the new praise team from this year that i used to be a part of. it was here that i faced some emotional stress. now don't get me wrong. i love all of them to death, but i faced the inevitable reality that i suspected before i left college to come home. i have changed ALOT over this past year, and my friends who havent gone to college haven't quite faced that step in life yet... and it's a drastic step. i feel like there were expectations of how i should be in their minds, but those expectations are not who i am anymore, and i'm fed up with trying to pretend like i'm somone that i'm not so i'm not going to try to fit in to those expectations. it's not their fault, i mean on the outside i look relatively similar to who i was on the day that i left. i guess the same thing happened to me when i was in their shoes because i had lots of friends go off to college who came back different, but it wasn't until now that i noticed strangely enough. before i went to college i always felt like i had something to prove to everyone. i'm tired of that now, so i'm not going to prove to anyone how much i've learned, what positive attributes i've taken on, or what negative attributes. i'm just going to be me and be accepted, disreguarded, or dismissed. i almost busted out crying tonight because of it, but i haven't cried publicly since literally i was in kindergarden, and i haven't cried privately in three years. i think either i've forgotten how by now, or i'm just to proud. i felt anguish though. it was a weird kind of anquish. it was as if there was a wall between me and them that they neither saw nor knew of its existence. in their minds guyandguitar19 came to visit while in my mind guyandguitar20 came. i hope i did not disturb anyone while i was there, but i guess i can kinda understand sorta how a vietnam veteran felt when he came home from the battle field for the first time to meet the ones he loved. how could the understand all of the changes he had faced. i'm sure they could read the paper or watch the news, but it just isn't the same. i remember when i was in high school, i had things all figured out. nobody could tell me something that i didn't know. i was so confident that i was going to go to college and it was going to be a breeze on my physical, mental, and spiritual life. out of everyone who gave me advice about this and that, i can only recall the warning i got from chris passaro. he said "don't you dare be too confident in yourself. there's always something that you can trip over." i look back at that now and i understand. think of it this way: we all have probably watched a movie on war, even some of the most realistic ones on the market. but when you yourself are drafted and put on the front lines and are shot at and have to kill... things enter a new prospective fast. it is a concept that only war veterans understand and the rest of us can only carry enough pride to think that we can relate. i don't know how my story will end though. i can take a wild guess, but it's not up to me. i think that some of my friends might eventually understand and come to accept it, but some might not want to understand it and they might just have to experience it for themselves. i'm almost assured that they will experience it eventually. all my other friends who have gone to college know exactly what i'm talking about. i spent long converations with many of my upper classmen college friends at belmont who were warning me that this was going to happen. i understand now, and just by writing this journal i feel better. it's all just another part of growing up that will hit everybody at God's designated time for them. i'm gunna go watch some tv now. peace and love...