Things Aren't The Same Anymore.........

Please Don't Take It The Wrong Way
I hate to say anything bad about the city whose school I graduated from five years ago this May, but just looking around me over the past 14 months since my return here - it just isn't the same. There are a lot of people who used to talk to me a lot when I attended Nokomis High School, but for some idiotic reason, some of them want nothing to do with me today.

I just feel very down on myself after (this is clearly my opinion) I feel I let my friends in Canton, Missouri down. I was dumb enough to go to Rockport-Fulton, Texas and try to reconcile a broken relationship with my father, only to get my laptop computer stolen prior to my departure. He wouldn't let me go back when I truly felt at home.

It Just Isn't "Home Sweet Home" Anymore (And I Don't Know Why)
I just don't feel at home in Nokomis anymore. I feel like an outcast only because I choose not to do what everyone else wants to do. I feel like some of the community leaders look at me like I should be nothing more than the scum underneath their shoes. I get awkward glances from people all the time, showing me that they don't want me here.

I'm just getting tired of being treated like a doormat. This is why half the time I choose to isolate myself from social stuff, because it's half the time I feel like the people of Nokomis want to excommunicate me somewhere else.

My Time In Missouri
I was beyond social when I was living in LaGrange and Canton, Missouri. I got along with just about every aspect of the communities. When I was down and out and had nowhere to turn when I was academically suspended from Culver-Stockton, it was the people of Life Tabernacle who looked out for me.

It was Bro. Paul & Sis. Brenda Kinney who took me under their wing when my only shelter at the time would have been my car (after being suspended from C-SC). They were the only ones who I would trust to share my problems with, a pastor-saint bond I cannot say I had near as much as my current pastor.

It was people like Rick & Janet Lippincott, Phillip & Kim Darnell, Sandy & Floyd Azbill and numerous other families who were there to help when the pastor wasn't around. I have to admit: I have a lot of problems and they were there for spiritual support and whatever else they were willing to do to help.

I made plenty of friends among the college, community and church. There's a bond that, I hate to day, that perhaps Nokomis may never have for me.

Once Again, Don't Take It The Wrong Way!
I just thought if I ever returned to Nokomis and Illinois in general, most of my friends would continue talking to me. For some reason or another, when I left for college, church friends and classmates just pretended I fell off the face of the earth. A lot of them still act that way now, although it's not particularly the high school classmates, but more like in the church friends department.

Being back in Illinois, I just hate to consider the fact if I ever returned to Missouri, most of my Missouri friends won't talk to me either. I try to keep up with my friends, but when you have friends from all over, it's hard to do so. Life makes those turns and you're spun into a downward spiral. It's during that time that many friendships are tried and often broken. If that happens, it was never a true friendship to start with.

Well, I think I'm done for now.....I have to go pick my brother up from the Springfield, IL Amtrak station in a few hours - he's coming back from a trip to Chicago!