Tonight (now technically last night), we sent in our Westminster applications online. One of the questions was why I desired to be a student at Westminster. Had to try really hard to come up for an answer to that one. It's not that Westminster is a bad school, or I don't want to go there or anything, because it's supposedly a lot like Providence. Bt the thing is, it's not Providence. It's just so so hard to feel alone here, because even though the family is here and they're all going through it too, I feel lonely almost all the time. Spending time with other people and with the family doesn't really help, because I feel lonely thinking about the senior year I'm not excited to be a part of, and the friends I just want to be back with right now. I still haven't grasped the fact that this is home. It's not my home yet. The only sense in which it is home is living with my family. This post is turning out to sound pretty negative, but the positive daily reports were getting a little boring anyways. :)
Just to continue in my sad mood tonight, I started making a list of all the things I'm going to miss out on this year, whether they're available at Westminster or not. It's not that I really truly care about whether or not there's a powder puff game, or a senior retreat, or senior ads in the yearbook, and a million other things, because even if those were to happen at Westminster, it wouldn't be what I'm talking about. It's that I will not be a member of the 2012 graduating class at Providence High School. I will not become incredibly close with my class and get excited to begin our last year through a challenging ropes course and praise and worship at senior retreat; I will not feel a sense of class pride, closeness to my best friends and fellow seniors, or school spirit when and if I play powderpuff; and I will not get to laugh at all the silly things that come along with putting your long-ago baby pictures in your senior ad in the yearbook.
It's hard to get excited about a senior year that's going to happen with no one you've ever met before, in a school you've never gone to before, with nothing you've ever known before. I was really excited and really proud to graduate with my class. And all of a sudden, life changed. I know this all sounds like a pity party, and it kind of is, but despite all this, I will still participate in opportunities and things this year, because to be detached from anyone and seem sad and unapproachable will only make for a truly miserable year, but it's just hard on so many different levels. I'm almost starting back at square 1 again: I have to work my way back through things like NHS, class officers, and the play, and even the currently non-existent dance team. I have to get used to all-new teachers, a new school, and most of all, a place where not one single person is a familiar face or a best friend I've gone to school with for 5 or more years, and not one single person knows who I am. I'm just feeling sad about the whole thing in general.
I've been wanting to write letters to everyone back home, especially since I haven't even gotten to formally thank them for everything they did the last few weeks I was there, but even just knowing that letters aren't going to change anything makes it hard to write them. Even if I write them 10 times a week, they will still continue doing things as a senior class and as a close friend group, and they will still be participating in senior privileges and events, and I will be left behind, missing all of them, and never being able to go back and join in the experience after it's done. I'll have my own senior year up here, but this is one thing I'm more than okay with sharing and not being the only one to not have what everyone else does. I want the same senior year all my friends will have, and I want the same senior year I had planned to have since I can remember.
Megan R. sent me a message on Facebook today that was a small bit of encouragement. It really did help, but probably not much is going to diminish these feelings and thoughts for a while. I'm just trying to wait them out and work through them and hope that time will help with everything, and maybe the business of school will keep my mind off of it most days. She basically told me that through a bible study she's doing on Jonah, there's the idea that "an interrupted life is a privileged life". That God's desire for your life is much more important than your own plans and ideas, and how we're supposed to realize the interruption, come to terms with it, and interweave it into our own "plan for life". She ended the message by saying that "likewise, many Christians pray God's will be done in their lives, and when it unravels right in front of them, they run because it doesn't play into their plans right then and there." Like Megan said, God is walking me through this entire process, and I just need to truthfully pray that God's will be done in my life and run with it when it's revealed.
I'll keep reminding myself through all of this that if God had this big of a life change for me planned, there must be something worthwhile and important here that I would've missed otherwise, and I need to be open and searching for that purpose here.
