All Alone in a Crowd

So, yesterday I went to meet the people who are starting on the same graduate training scheme as me. One part of the day was a "speed dating" section which involved us finding out each others' main hobbies. Three of the guys put down drinking.

Watching a presentation about how much fun last year's graduates had had on the scheme, there were an awful lot of pictures of people with drinks in hand.

Talking with the other people, there were plenty of comments about drinking, nights out and hangovers dropped into the conversation.

And suddenly I'm back to feeling like a sixteen year old freak who doesn't want to try drinking, isn't interested in dating and would rather stay in with a book than try and sneak into clubs. I was lucky in school; there were a couple of other girls who also didn't rush to the toilets to check their make-up at the end of the day, just in case they passed a guy while on the way home. I found a couple of people who weren't fussed about grabbing a boyfriend or going out clothes shopping or getting drunk. At university, I found a surprising number of friends who don't drink and plenty of others for whom alcohol is something occasionally sampled as a glass of wine at a party.

But there is still often that sense that I don't fit in. This loneliness and feeling of not being like everyone else was, I think, a large contributing factor in my developing a disorder.

I was talking to my mum the other day about one of my cousins. It seems he really doesn't fit in with his classmates at school because they're all interested in drinking, smoking, drugs and having sex (or at least pretending to be so for the sake of appearences). I went to a private school with a strong emphasis on academic acheivement, which meant that the crowd interested in those things was smaller and less influential. He's at a comprehensive and seems to be the only one not wanting to get drunk, high or laid.

I don't see most of my cousins that often, but I do sometimes worry. There is strong evidence that eating disorders have a major genetic factor. I can remember comments from my aunt in the past about how he seems to eat a lot but stay thin. Maybe he's lucky. Maybe he's energetic. Maybe my aunt has a different value for "a lot of food" than I do.

But I wonder and I worry and I wish there was some way that I could let him know that things get better. He won't always feel like he's the only one not interested.