Musings Before Bed

I have approximately one week before I move out on my own and go to Pennsylvania. I know, from the fees alone, that my last two years I will need loans for the first time in my academic career, and that scares me a great deal in one sense. It's like losing control just a bit at a time, and I hate to feel out of control of my life. More and more, that is the feeling that I get these days with my life, the feeling that I am not control.

I know that He is, but at the same time, He gave us free will. I look forward to the move in some senses; I can't wait to get away from my father being the main one after twenty-some years of emotional pain. In others though, I'm quite scared: I need to meet all new people...not a problem when I did my first two degrees close to home, I need to make new friends, I need to adjust to a new parish, I need to pay way more in bills than I do now, I need to still pay almost two thousand dollars in fees per semester even without my tuition waiver, I need to work on my papers for conference submital so I can try to get my trip paid, I need to get a passport, I need to get used to an entirely new city in a new state, I need to spend all the money on new textbooks, and I am going to need to adjust to the new levels of work that are demanded by my new program.

You know, sometimes He makes us walk outside our comfort zones, sometimes He allows for our relationships to fail so that we can move on to something we would not have done if we had gotten married when we wanted to. Maybe He says I need to be single, or that I will meet someone I never could have expected otherwise, though it pains me to say that. Because my last relationship, well I've never met anyone else who met my high standards before, and it seems to be impossible that I ever will again, you know?

And tonight at game night, my next to last excursion over to a friend's house, I realized what a wonderful relationship I had, both from my end, and from my ex-girlfriend's end. My friend B, we'll call him, got a phone call from his girlfriend, and as soon as she started talking he was barking and cutting her off and eventually hung up, leading her to call another friend who was there to cry. B was angry that she would dare interrupt his evening with a problem involving her family, and to be honest, it pissed me off that he reacted that way, because for years I would stay up for hours on end to comfort my girlfriend because I respected her as a human being and I wanted to try and help her with her problems; she would do the same with me. It was a vital part of our relationship, that we would be there for each other, that we were willing to stay up to all parts of the night when one another had a problem. To see a guy just blow it off so easily and then say that he didn't care about his girlfriend except for the sex, it just sparked a fury deep inside me.

It just amazed me that here is this guy with a girl who seems to genuinely care about him, but at the same time he doesn't give a crap about her. I would kill for another wonderful and caring relationship like the one that I had for nearly three years, and here he is just blowing her off. I mentioned this to another friend there after B left and he shrugged, "Girls like assholes more than nice guys Phil". It seems terribly blunt, but it seems to be true; the biggest assholes I know always have a constant stream of girlfriends.

Anyhow, they gave me a bit of a going away present tonight in the form of one of our 3D dungeons. A set of prison cells with torches along the walls, blood on the tiles, and doors to each cell. I think that I will take it with me to Pennsylvania and keep it on my bookshelf, a reminder of friends that will still be here in West Virginia, as I search for new friends up in Pennsylvania.

Sometimes God answers our prayers in ways we don't expect I guess, and in other times, He doesn't seem to answer them at all. I don't know if He's answered my prayers or not in leading me to this doctoral program in Pennsylvania, but I hope He has, and that He has a plan for me. Things lined up too well for me to attend this program, so I have to believe He wills this, and that He will take care of me.

Lord save me, Lord lead me, Lord protect me. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner and guide me unto perfect holiness and perfect love.

Edit: Last night after finishing this, I laid in bed and cried for the first time in eight days. It hit me, one day if/when I move on, I'll probably talk about kids eventually again. When my relationship ended, as I suppose God willed, I did not only lose a girlfriend and a best friend, but the future we had planned together, including already named children. Those future children's loss slammed into me like a brick wall.