Sandra James just can't seem to make relationships click. Between her friends and the seemingly endless string of "romantic interests" she's burned through in the last two years in school, Sandra just doesn't feel like she can bring anything involving humans into focus. Conversations just drift past her, seemingly having no relavance to anything she feels, anything she thinks about. Sandra knows she can't be all that different from everyone else - she's human, after all - but it seems like every time she finds herself talking to just about anyone for more than 10 minutes, there's just no bond, no connection - it always feels like no one she meets lives on the same planet, the same plane - she hasn't shared a reality with anyone in a long long time.

It's not that she had never clicked with anyone like that, it's just that whenever she did, or thought she did, there was always some hold-up, something that stood in the way of perfection. If she made a best friend, she always moved away, or decided to transfer to another school at the end of the semester. If she thought she found a guy she hit it off with, he always had a girlfriend - or started dating some other girl. Sandra never let go of some of these people, always kept waiting for what she wanted from them to just suddenly happen, for everything to fall into place like there was never any problem in the first place.

Sandra can remember times when she stood in the driveway, just out of sight, half way hiding in the shadows, listening to someone leave, trying to figure out what it was she had been wanting to say besides "goodbye". The car would drive away, and she would stand there another ten minutes, waiting for it to come back down the driveway, as if he had left something unsaid as well.

She hasn't had what she considers a "real" boyfriend in almost two years - since her senior year in high school. Her boyfriend was a year ahead of her, and when he went off to another state for school, he just stopped returning phone calls after a while. He came back for breaks and sometimes on a long weekend, but when he wasn't around, she was completely out of the picture - absence makes the heart go yonder, and all that. She's had a string of 3-night stands and boys that barely manage to fulfill a half-drunken carnal desire - or don't.

Sandra is lonely, but not really alone. She has friends, but she feels like she spends too much time alone, too much time watching movies or "talking" to people on AIM. She can never find anyone to go meet her for a drink when she really just wants to go out. Some nights she leaves almost 10 messages and doesn't get a single call back until the end of the weekend - when someone needs the notes from the last biology lecture. It's never really this bad, of course, except when she sits around and thinks it is.

Sandra has tried to make herself interesting, but every time she talks about something she finds interesting, she just comes across as weird. No one seems to understand her - her motives are always questioned, everything she is passionate about constantly requires explanation before any sort of recognition crosses the faces of her friends. When she starts talking in a circle of people at a party, the circle gets smaller.

She never could get along well at a party - not that she ever minded drugs and alcohol: in fact she rather enjoys them. Sandra doesn't understand though why discussion of them has to permeate every conversation, every moment of everyone's life. Sure, parties are great, but when people don't talk about anything besides getting drunk tonight or who got drunk last night, it gets old pretty fast.

It was a little different when she was in high school and there were more drugs than alcohol - at least then everyone would sit around and philosophize, even if it was just junky ramblings about subjective reality and the nature of mind. At least when people are high, they can still think, even if it is disjointed and pseudo-scientific. The conversations at drinking parties generally were based on who could say the most outrageous thing - who could create the most drama, who had the most mental problems. That whole scene made her realize that alcohol turns a whole group of people into a seething, stinking mass, bent on winning the race to an intoxicated oblivion.

Her friends often told her that she would have good luck at bars, that if she would only put in a little effort, she would meet someone she really clicked with. She always did meet guys in bars, and interrupted string of pseudo-relationships that only lasted an hour or two and never meant anything to anyone involved. Guys would bug her all night, trying to hang on her, "accidently" bumping into her, just generally being a pain in the ass. She didn't belong in a bar almost as much as she didn't belong at a keg party.

There was no real sense of community in her life, nowhere she really belonged, no one to tuck her in at night and tell her that everything will be okay. Without doing it on purpose, Sandra had managed to either walk away from or be left by everyone that really mattered in her life. Even her family was far away - granted, only two hours, but too far to make breakfast in bed for. She missed her father the most - he always managed to say exactly the right thing when she needed it most. He wasn't always psychic, but at the end of a day of letdowns, he was usually there with open arms and the sort of connection and understanding you only get from your family. At least, on the rare occasions that she found time to get home.