Growing up

I'm starting to sympathize with Peter Pan. I don't think I want to grow up, either. It's strange and slightly painful. I ran into some friends from high school last night at the movie theater at a showing of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and it was undoubtedly one of the strangest experiences I've had in a long time. I've always felt a bit two-sided, seeing things rationally but still feeling all the things that someone completely illogical would feel. That may be normal, but I somehow doubt it. Anyway, that double view is odd enough, but there's nothing weirder than feeling like two people at the same time. It was like my new self, the identity I've formed since I've started college, was facing off against who I was in high school. Who won, you ask? I don't know. I didn't talk, except to the person that I'd brought, and one comment about C.S. Lewis to a friend who appreciates literature. The sad thing is that this is how I always act around my old friends. It makes me feel like I'm acting condescendingly toward them; the reason I don't talk, after all, is that I feel they don't have the same tastes as I do now. In fact, most of them don't, but there are things we still have in common. After all, I randomly met them at a movie theater on a Tuesday night. What are the odds of that? I don't want to abandon them; that's happened to me enough that I don't want to do it to someone else. Contradictoraly (That's probably not a word, and if it is, it's probably spelled wrong -- sorry.) enough, though, not knowing how to act around them is making me pull away from them. So how do I handle this double life and learn to be who I am around everyone? I don't know. It's a lot of pressure, actually. There's nothing I despise more than hypocrisy. I suppose I'll find a way to handle it as I keep growing up, because leaving old lives behind is a part of that. But for now, I just need to find a way to feel like one person again.