Been Here Before - and it hasn't gotten any better

I remember every new-school first week I've ever had - preschool where I chased my mother back to her car crying the whole way, my various elementary schools and awkward hellos, middle school - I was actually happy for this one, because I got to hide among the masses, my first high school where I hid out in the library, my second high school sophomore year where I ate my lunch in the bathroom for the first week because I didn't have anywhere else to go, my first college where I researched politics constantly to fill the hole that was left by all my friends (and th3 Goofball) leaving to grand adventures without me, and my second college, where I didn't even try to make friends.  I remember the depression, the time-wasting, the renewed focus on classes, the awkward hellos and the desperate (while trying to seem not too desperate) pleas for friends, the moping, the self-pity.

I remember being able to escape home at the end of the day.

Now that I've transferred to the other coast, I'm back to square one, with added cultural barriers and strange customs and no one that I can talk to without hiding part of myself first.  Even after being here over a month, I still get lost and have no idea how to translate friendly faces into actual friends.  I can't go home - not for the weekend, not for Thanksgiving, not for Christmas, maybe not for summer.  I'm stuck in a small, creaky room in an old hall in a school full of pretentious, wealthy clones and freezing weather and I can't escape.

Well, I could, probably.  But I am not going to - and knowing that somehow makes it worse.