It’s lonely. And sad. And disappointing.

In books and movies people never seem to be alone; everyone is always going out somewhere with friends and having a good time. At college, everyone seems to be making food runs together and going out to parties and just enjoying life.

I have let life pass me by, especially in my time at college. I’ve never been to a party on campus (unless you want to include the amazing Choir Christmas Party everyone in the choir goes to in December), and rarely does anyone invite me to do something with them. This morning I was lucky enough to go to spend some time outside of class with a friend as we went to Walmart to get things for the Choir Christmas Party that was going on and it made me really happy.

Of course, a lot of the time when people get together to hang out, it’s a spur of the moment kind of thing that requires hardly any planning. That doesn’t happen to me a lot, or at least it doesn’t anymore. In the past two years, I’ve had one or two friends later in the night ask me to go somewhere with them and most times I would decline because I would already have my night planned out or I was just exhausted from the week. They stopped asking me to hang out with them and it’s lonely.

People don’t like to be alone and I can understand it, of course I can understand it, but I’m that introvert who really does enjoy some time alone and needs it from time to time in order to not go insane. I’ve realized recently that I’m not the first person people think of when they want to hang out with someone in the spur of the moment.

My college friends will post things on Facebook about hanging out with others or will just talk about it and I’ll realize that I’m missing out on a lot of things because I’m never invited. But I also realize that I may say “no” whenever someone invites me out. The more people talk about hanging out with others, the more it reminds me of high school and my other friends who hang out with each other all the time while I would sit at home barely talking to anyone. I never feel as important as others surely do, and I start to doubt myself and wonder what makes me stand apart from others.

Why do people seem to not want to hang out with me?

It’s an unspoken question that will forever be unanswered because there’s no simple answer. And maybe there is, and it would be that I’m not the first person to come to mind when someone wants to hang out with another person.

And it’s not that no one wants to hang out with me; there are plenty of friends who have said that we should hang out more, but none of us try to make any plans to do just that. We all have very busy and very different lives and there’s no telling when any of us are free at the same time.

And so, I sit in my room, my roommate and I sitting at our equally messy desks, side by side, not saying a word because we’re too entranced by the words and pictures on our laptops, or we’re keeping our hands and minds busy with various projects of painting, knitting, or crocheting. On various weekends we get food and watch movies or TV shows together and that’s the most that we hang out besides when we tell each other about our days throughout the week.

My roommate and I hang out together all the time in our room, but it’s because we’re stuck in the same room together. No one outside our room really tries to get me to come out and it makes me sad from time to time, but over the years I’ve discovered that I shouldn’t get my hopes up too high about anything, and I shouldn’t think that the books and movies tell the truth when it comes to real life.

To not be invited is sad, lonely, and disappointing, but that’s just life for me.