I went back to see some friends in Indiana last week, and for my best friend's wedding (though I'm about 90% certain her new husband is gay, and I'm afraid she'll be the cover wife who has to get divorced at 35, but that's another story). I have several different groups of friends back home, but I really only felt like a part of one of them (and that was only two other people). I liked seeing everyone again, but I just knew I didn't belong with them anymore. When I moved from my hometown to Lafayette before my junior year of high school, it took me over a year before I realized I didn't belong with my old friends anymore; now it's happened in less than half a year.

It's not such a bad thing, I suppose, but now I don't know what to do. I don't have any real friends in Texas right now, and if it weren't for my girlfriend finally moving down here I'd be completely on my own. I can function without friends (hell, I went through most of high school that way) but having had several groups in which I felt like I belonged for so many years in college is making not having any again a bit harder to adapt to than I figured it would be.

In other news, I've officially begun the process of applying to grad schools. I've applied to Pittsburgh and I'm in the process of applying to NYU, but the applications always ask to list the publications my stories have been in. Despite numerous submissions (to be fair, they were all to high-profile magazines), I don't have any. I knew the competition was going to be stiff for the top schools on my list (Texas, Washington, NYU) but I seriously hope that it's just kind of expected that the people they accept have already been published. So yeah, fun times....