Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
-Rabindranath Tagore
I’ve been wanting to start a blog for awhile now. There have been a few attempts, and I haven’t been very good at starting and keeping them. So hopefully this year I can stick with it and bring you the best content that I can with the hectic life I lead.
Like the subtitle of the blog says, I’m trying to find where I fit in and how to do it one step at a time. In my first semester away at college (after three in high school), I feel as though I’m lost in the crowd; someone who doesn’t stand out, someone who isn’t memorable. I don’t feel like I fit in at all, and I’m trying everything I can think of to try to wedge myself into place. I feel as though I haven’t found a home in the university that I thought for a while that I would love, and my worst nightmare came true.
My dad and I had to go down to my university to talk to financial aid about a month before I moved away. It’s only 45 minutes away, but it feels like a lifetime on the backroads, and we were talking about the university and what I was most excited about. The whole way there, I felt like I was about to hyperventilate, I had so much anxiety. The meeting with financial aid went more than smoothly, and my dad was so excited about me going and that I did so well in high school to be going to such a great school and we didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket. I was quiet in the truck as it started to rain and we managed our way through the tiny town to find someplace to get lunch while we waited out the rain. As we sat waiting on our food, my dad asked what was the matter. I outright told him, “It’s all hitting me at once. I’m terrified.”
We got home and I sat on the couch with my dad, crying and terrified of what was ahead of me. I told my dad that I was scared that I was going to hate it. What would happen if I did? I don’t want to let him down, and I don’t want all my hard work to go to waste. But I have a hard time being in situations and facing things in my life that I am afraid that will let my dad down, and hating being 45 minutes away from everyone I love and getting along on my own terrified me. I always thought I’d do okay living away from home, and in that moment I couldn’t handle knowing that I felt like I couldn’t. That’s my worst nightmare.
This past semester tore me down and brought me to places I didn’t want to be, but there was one thing that brought me hope. I dealt with people who seemed to be my friends and turned a complete 180, and I was denied being a part of something I’ve been wanting to be in for almost a year now because of a misunderstanding. However, my relationships not only with my dad and our tiny family but with my boyfriend, the love of my life, have been strengthened more than I would have ever imagined. They are my world, and they are what gets me up in the morning, as cliche as it sounds.
I don’t know where my life is going to take me in 2014. But I know that as long as I have my dad, my love, and my dad’s girlfriend and her two girls in my life, I’m unstoppable.
Come along with me on my journey, and, just maybe, you’ll be there when I find just who it is that I am.
The True DIVIDE 