College changes people

The other day I was really thinking about this. About how college changes you and everything. Friendships, relationships, I mean everything.

Particularly as you may notice, friendships.

I have a friend who left me to go to college this past year while I finished up high school. She would come back totally excited to see me. I wasn't particularly that excited. As different as I wish I was, I wasn't and it was just me. Nothing really that exciting about me.

I have noticed this year with this particular friend that she has really changed. If you know me at all, you know I don't deal with change that easily. One person who has known this for a while now and who realizes it the most with problems I have is one of my old youth pastors Lindsay. She knows how much I hate when things change and she gets it more than other people do.

My friend has straightened her hair a lot this year. I know her brother doesn't like it. Her friends are nice, yes, but I don't know, they might have a bad influence on her. Some of them drink. I just worry about her.

I thought she wasn't gonna get into that kind of stuff. I thought she wasn't gonna drink. But like everything with this friend this year, things have changed.

I'm kinda shocked by it all. Actually I'm kinda hurt. I know she and I joke about me being her designated driver, but still I don't like it. And I feel like there has been some friction between us this year. Actually I feel like this friction has been going on for a while. She doesn't mention anything, but I just feel it and I hate it. I feel like we're moving apart.

Not a bad thing I know, but it's kinda sad. We've been best friends since we were seven. That's hard.

College really changes people. It kinda scares me to know that I'll probably be different in a year after my first year of college. However, I'm not going to a party school. I'm going to a private, Christian university. If anything, I'll be a lot closer to God after this next year. Who knows?

I would also like to make a promise here to everyone and especially to God. Like my pact with God in high school about not dating, I would like to make another promise to God. I want to promise to never drink alcohol.

I would like to say that I have never drank alcohol, but I have before. It's probably why I never want to touch the stuff again. And when you hear what I went through you'll probably think that's not a big deal, but I hated it.

I grew up in the Catholic church. I did pretty much everything except get confirmed into that church. I had my first communion and one of our practices involved the wafer and the wine. The priest made us drink the wine and we had to go through a few times. It tasted horrible. I don't like the idea of alcohol. At my actual first communion, the guy who had the cup said I didn't have to take it, so I didn't. The church I go to now uses grape juice.

I just have bad memories of that one time with that priest. Probably one of my reasons for not really liking the priest of that church very much. There are other reasons for not liking him though. Frankly he kinda just scares me.

Anyways, beer and alcohol, I don't know, I just don't like the idea of it. I don't like the smell of alcohol really of any kind. I think beer is revolting. I don't mind when my dad has a beer once in a while. That doesn't bother me that much. But watching a few of my aunts get drunk before parties just so they can deal with the family, that really just bothers me. I don't want to end up like them.

I hope by going to Spring Arbor University, that I won't get involved with the drinking and icky gross stuff that party schools deal with. I want to stay clean. My body is a temple and I don't want to ruin it. I want that purity. Yet another purpose for my purity ring.