Bitterness

So it's been forever since I've posted. Life is was good and I had nothing to blog about. I was staying happy and surrounding myself with happiness. I didn't have any major battles with new situations that arose, just dealt with them in ways that caused me little or no stress. I found ways to cope, and it was great.

My next battle, though, will probably be one of the hardest I've ever fought. A little backstory:

My freshman year of high school I joined the robotics team because my best friend's brother was on it and it sounded fun. It consumed my life for the rest of high school and the next two years of college. While in college, I was a mentor. I helped out with photography, graphic design, and a few miscellaneous marketing projects. It was great, and I loved it even though it was super stressful and left me with little to no free time.

The way the program is set up, teams are given a challenge in the form of a game the first weekend in January each year. After "kickoff", teams have six weeks to design and build a robot to play the game. Mentors from the community come in to help highschoolers along with engineering and other things. After those six weeks are over, there's a one week break, then a seven week competition season. My old team has meetings almost every night for those 4 months.

While still on the team, as both a student and mentor, life was fine. I would make friends based on who was on the team, because I wouldn't see anyone else for 4 months out of the year and I never truly understood why. So I left my non-robotics friends behind and made new ones. I never anticipated that I would be a non-robotics person myself

My old school district had had some issues with alumni mentoring while they were still in college, and this past fall they made a rule that alumni cannot mentor the team for four years after they graduate. Since it's been two years (three this spring) since I graduated, I was "fired" from being on the team. At the time I was upset, but it's nice to have free time and focus on other things.

My current problem is that all the friends I've made weren't alumni of this team and are mentors. I used to see these people for 4 hours a night, 5 days a week during build season. During the offseason we'd hang out. We spent summer by the pool and at the park doing yoga. We had brunch weekend mornings that turned into dinner at some restaurant. Now I'm lucky to even have a passing conversation with one of them via text.

Today marks the end of week one of build season. I've had so much free alone time that I'm getting bitter. The friends I had in college before robotics started are still on break and won't be back in town for another week. And then I'm assuming I'll even have time to hang out with them and vice versa.

I've spent the last two nights in the gym. Even with the rush of endorphines that exercise gives you, I'm still upset. I'm angry that I didn't see this coming. I'm angry that even when I'm with the robotics people all they talk about is robots and robot strategy. I'm angry at the school district for forcing me out. I'm angry because even the two mentors that skip a decent amount of meetings don't even want to hang out with me, or get unexpectedly "tied up" with robots or work that they're not done until late.

I'm turning bitter towards all of my friends. I hate it, but I hate what the program has done to and taken away from me more. I'll try to post an update in the next week before classes start up again, but I don't know how long I'll be able to stay positive, if I'm even positive right now. I feel resentment, anger, bitterness, and loneliness. I had finally found friends, and now they're taken away from me.