When I started at Cornish I was just starting my senior year in high school. Concurrent enrolement.

I lived in Seattle, not quite a month previous to my first day at Cornish I did that little thing with throwing Jonny out of the apartment. I had been homeschooled since sixth grade and had not been in a situation where there were other students around me. I hadn�t taken classes. I�d done all my junior and senior high school class work from books. I�d read the book either in my room or downstairs or something and do the work books and such. It was a correspondance school of sorts.

Atop that, I lived in the country. My social exposure was with the local equine 4-H group and I didn�t like the kids in that group. They irritated me. (Much the same way most Bitchney Queers and Back Seat Toys fans irritate me today. And for the same reasons.) So, I went to the meetings and I did the drill-practice work with the group, but I didn�t ride with other people. I didn�t have anything to do with the kids my age because... *shrugs* I just didn�t want to be around them or talk about the things they talked about.

Atop that, I had �social� dealings with the kids in church. Our youth group met on Sunday mornings for church-wide sports practices. Volley ball, basket ball, cheer leading, track and field. I was involved in those things but not because I wanted to hang around with the kids or because I had any interest, whatsoever in sports or cheer leading *gags* but because I was a female in the church and that�s what I was supposed to do.

*shrugs*

When we would have sports meets, I would do the work required of me and do that whole fake-smile thing while I was cheer leading. When it was necessary to cheer, I would use my whole voice. Loudly. I was the loudest one on the squad. Every time. And I didn�t follow instruction well. Oh, I�d do what the captain told me, but I didn�t like it and I didn�t hide the fact that I didn�t like it.

When we weren�t on the floor during a game, I would have a book or a note book and sit back and watch. I would sit quietly, by myself. Once in a while I would talk with friends. One on one. And my friends were always male. The females irritated me. They were always concerned about their hair or who was looking at them or that cute guy over there. Give me a farggin break.

Sure, I was interested in some of the guys, but not the �hot� guys. I was interested in those who were about three years older than I, maybe four. Those who were taller, more confident. I liked the males who were mature and acted mature. I didn�t find the popular males attractive with the exception of two. *shrugs*

I wasn�t fond of anyone on the cheer squad except Denise and she was best friends with another girl. Both of them were very into the boys and whether or not their hair was good and all that. Denise and I would talk, once in a while, but only when no one else was there for her to be socializing with. *shrugs* I didn�t care. I would talk with the social rejects.

Like from the movie The Breakfast Club, I would have socialized with Ally Sheedy�s character. I would have socialized with Anthony Michael Hall�s character too. Of course, I think that Anthony Michael Hall�s character wouldn�t have socialized with me. And Ally Sheedy�s character would have done so more openly.

I would have avoided Judd Nelson�s character, rolled my eyes at Molly Ringwald�s character and admitted the good looks and athletic ability of Emilio Esteves� character, but I wouldn�t have had a �crush� on him. *shrugs* I was different. I felt different. I acted different. And I believed that everyone else saw that I was different. And that was fine by me.

So, my social experience had been pretty much a case of �be polite but don�t get attached�. That carried through at college. It was like I was among the people, but not a part of the people. I don�t know if that makes any sense at all, but that�s how it feels to me.

I didn�t ask too many questions and I didn�t get involved in too many activities. I was invited once, by a person I didn�t know at the time, to go to a party on the weekend. I was shy when it came to that sort of thing. I said that I couldn�t, as I went home on the weekends. He said that was okay and went on his way. I found out the next semester that the person who invited me was one of the teachers. My piano teacher, to be exact. Peter Mack.

===Peter Mack is an incredible pianist. If you ever have the opportunity to listen to him, or to see him live, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you do so.===

I attended my classes and I went to practices, but I didn�t actually practice piano or singing when I wasn�t in class. I didn�t do my homework. That might well be one of the reasons that I got such poor grades in those courses where doing the homework is the way you learn the information. *chuckles* Theory for instance. *smirks*

Maybe that�s why I still suck at music theory.

Anyway, I just walked through my classes. I didn�t focus on them. I didn�t concentrate on them. I didn�t think about the people I was going to class with. I had a couple people I considered friends. We didn�t talk much. We didn�t socialize outside of class. We just shared classes and would sometimes talk in between. About the class information or about whatever the other person wanted to talk about.

In fact, I didn�t talk much at all. I listened a lot.

What I didn�t understand, is that I was depressed. I was withdrawing. And the parents didn�t see it because they only saw me on weekends. I had always been a quiet person. My best friend had always been my dog. I didn�t like the city and I didn�t like the people in the city. I didn�t want to be there. I didn�t want to be in school. But I went.

Why? Cause Mom saw that I had great potential and she wanted me to go to college. She wanted me to be in school and have all the opportunities possible. *shrugs, shaking her head*

I really should have gone to a community college for the first couple years. I should have spent the senior year of highschool living with my folks and doing my highschool work. I should have worked for a year, earned money, then gone to a community college for two years, getting an associates degree. I should have gone to Cornish after I had already adjusted to �school�.

*laughs softly at herself*

So, I made it through the first semester without too many problems. But I didn�t deal with stuff. I didn�t actually do anything about being raped. Hell, I hadn�t told anyone about it really. Not even mom. I still haven�t told her everything. And I know she didn�t read that specific series of entries.

I should probably print it out and have her read it, then talk about it. *shrugs*

Whatever.

I went back for spring term. The classes were a little harder. Specifically theory. Specifically because I didn�t really know the information from the first term and in order to go on to the second, you really do have to know the stuff from the first. *chuckles* C�est la vie, eh?

Oh, During the first semester, I was cast as a lead in the classical music department�s semester show. There were three leads in that show and I had one. But, I had to be removed from the role because four of the shows were on dates when I couldn�t be there. Two Friday night performances and two Saturday afternoon performances.

Bioux will understand why. During that specific time, I was still bound by the rules of the church and the church said that to be in a performance on the sabbath was a no-no. When I found out the times for the performances, I told my music teacher that I couldn�t do four of them. She was really pissed off. And so were the rest of the faculty members.

I thought I�d done something horribly wrong. For some reason, I thought that I had done something so wrong that I had disgraced the school/my teacher. Did I tell anyone that I felt this way? Nope. Not even my folks.

I suppose that�s when I started slacking off on the rest of my school work. I just withdrew a little more.

The next term, I went back. Why? Because I was supposed to. (Spring Term still) My voice teacher still taught me. But in the Spring term, I had a room mate. Baaaaad idea. She was more mentally fucked up than I was. Except she didn�t show it by withdrawing and becoming even more silent. She showed it by being bitching and getting wild.

As I look back on it and her, I think she may well have been extremely bi-polar. I don�t mean one of those who has sudden mood swings only, but the sudden mood swings and severe aggressive and violent tendancies. And she was into self-abuse. Not physically, but ... well, she would go out and do some extremely stupid things. Like, get completely wasted and fuck anyone who would take her.

That added a little stress to my life. *chuckles* But how did I deal with the stress? I withdrew a little more. I got a little more quiet. I slipped into silence a little more. I studied less. I practiced less. I didn�t smile at all.

I was attending one class which met on Friday afternoons. We�d get together for three hours on a Friday afternoon and... well... It was like a �living art� class. We would do something in order to watch how people reacted to it. For instance, there was one class period where the assignment was to go through the local �mall� (just a block building with a bunch of stores in it) in silence and do stuff. We could interact with people, but we couldn�t talk or actually �communicate�. We were supposed to see how people reacted to us.

One of the fellow students walked down the up escallator for about half an hour. He didn�t say anything, just kept going in time with the escallater. *chuckles quietly* At the end of that time, we went back to the class room and talked about what we had seen/done/learned. Mom called that class the �smile and get an A� class.