Though I move on, I still reflect.

So what do you know? Junior year is officially over. I'm a senior-to-be. Scary.

When the school year comes to an end, I always reflect on that year as well as the years before that. Each year I realize the same thing: that I don't have a solid group of friends.

Don't get me wrong, I have amazing friends. It's just that all of these amazing friends are from different groups in the school. They are nothing like each other and they just don't really belong together. And there's another thing. While I may have awesome friends, these friends change from year to year. The people I was good friends with during freshmen year are now people I sometimes say hi to in the hallway. Quite strange, if you ask me.

This is Freshman year. I mostly hung out with people from my cluster class. My cluster consists of the people in the second picture (but that picture is actually from sophomore year.) My cluster was a pretty tight-knit group, probably due to the fact that we had almost every class together.

This is sophomore year. I hung out with Pauline a LOT that year and got really close to her. I continued hanging out with people from my cluster but we weren't as close anymore. We tried to organize reunions but at most, only half the people showed up--the ones that showed up are the ones I still somewhat talk to today. I met other people sophomore year but I was in too much of a depression to really hang out with anyone new. Sophomore year was blegh.

Junior year, oh boy. The relationships I have with people get less and less personal as the years go by, eh? It's fun hanging out with a bunch of people sometimes, but it gets tiring. I want more close relationships with people. When I hang out with people, I don't just want to hang out with them--I want to bond with them and learn more about them. But that never happens. It's just fun, fun, and more fun--which at the end isn't really all that fun.

I know this is normal--it probably happens to everyone. But most people end up with a close group of friends by the end of senior year. I don't think I will--I'm too skeptical about people as well as about myself. I don't know really know how to get close to people because I don't trust people enough to be myself around them. I find it hard to act like myself around people I just met (with the exception of some people, who make me feel right at home.)

I believe this is an issue of self-esteem and self-perception.