Reflecting on the Past, Looking to the Future

Today I read an entry on how my ex, since that's apparently how we call one another now after swearing not to use the term, has moved on and become vibrant again. I felt truly happy for her, that she's able to be that life loving person I had fallen in love with years ago, instead of being constantly scared like I'm better known for being. To read that she is healthy and strong in the physical, mental, and spiritual arenas was a godsend to me. I made a smile not to hide my pain, not to be polite, but because I was honestly happy to hear how well she's doing.

I still feel as if I am to blame however, for all the pain and all the suffering that went along with the end of our relationship and the months that followed. I've not been told how vibrant I am, how wonderful I'm coping, but rather people who see me often remark on how pale I've become, how I seem to look like Hell and how I've lost my spark for life. At least that's the way people at home treated me and told me.

I've been up here for nearly a month now, and I cling to those words spoken by my ex about my time up here, "You'll flourish up there". I can only hope to be so lucky, and it is precisely what I am hoping for. I was often jealous during our relationship that she had a family she could turn to outside of her family and her old friends, that she had made at the Newman House. This evening I found the nearly mythical Catholic Student Association when they set up a table after the Mass...and as I chatted amiably with a Sophomore guy who was answering questions and as I looked through the brochures, I noticed something. The pictures were all a small group of students.

Ever since coming up here, I have felt adrift, but still relatively happy in our university parish. It's just a really big and vibrant place, and even helping out with the used book sale book sorts I was mainly running into people older than myself. I deeply have been desiring to have that sort of personal small group relationship that my ex has been having with her friends at the Newman Center. With the Catholic Student Association I think that I've found that, or hopefully have found that. I need them to get back to me about a meeting time before I go to work on Monday, so that I'm able to work them into my schedule...because let's face it, work is one thing, but becoming the person you once were and more than what you were, that's more important.

I want to meet people my own age, who share my beliefs, and to have friends again that don't consume my entire life. To know that I'm there for them, and they for me, but not feeling the need to wait upon them hand and foot for all their needs and do my best to make sure that they never feel a moment of sorrow. I did not realize until recently, what sort of emotional bondage I had placed myself in to my ex; I doubt she realized it either to be honest. Each day I would do my best to be good for her, to tell her everything would be okay and to make her feel better about herself...but the cost on myself was, I guess, more than I thought.

I will admit it freely, I have fallen apart in the time since she dumped me, and more so since she cut off almost all contact. I've had so much time to sit here and dwell on all the things that I've done wrong, what I could have done better, what I should have done better, how my emotional clinginess probably hurt and weakened both of us. I've sat here and not enjoyed my summer to the fullest, partially due to my own emotional breakdown, but also because if it could go wrong, it did more or less:
*I had some unknown thing on my hands, the conflicting medicines and such laid me up for a good bit of time feeling like I was going to die.
*I screwed up big time with my ex, and hurt her, and hurt myself in a giant way.
*I spent the first two weeks of my summer break after my last graduation sick in bed.
*My uncle's father has masses in his lungs and his pancreas after we buried his wife last year.
*Family drama has been at an all time high with the extended family.
*I've moved away from home for the second time, but this time instead of being 30 minutes away, I'm nearly four hours and a state away.
*I underwent a series of blood tests, it turned out that the hospital's machines had been screwing up my results. But what had been an innocuous "Here let's just run a blood test for a baseline" had become "We need to run more, certain levels of things are elevated that may be cancer related". It eventually ended up just the calibrations apparently being off and my levels of everything were normal; no cancer, thank you Lord.
*My relationship with my father continued to worsen, despite my efforts to mend it.

Now that I've been all "oh poor me", let's look to the future shall we? I'm starting a prestigious program with an opportunity few people get in life, a chance to earn their doctorate. I'm nervous sure, but not as scared as I once was about it. I think the main part of my reasoning there is that my ex assured me she thought I would flourish up here, and her opinion still matters to me more than most people's. The second reason is that my father tried to scare me out of it, and to be honest, in this month of gloomy introspection, I've noticed that without his daily interjections of telling me how much I suck, I've become a bit stronger. I won't say I'm vibrant, I won't say I'm strong, but I will say I am definitely not the weak wreck emotionally of July...and the lack of his constant negative reinforcement has definitely helped in that.

I've met the professors I'm working for. One of them is a renowned author in our field for textbooks, and I will be updating his bestselling one for a new edition as part of my job. He seems like a pretty good guy and believes my education comes first and foremost in our relationship, with the book second. If anything else, that dedication to my well being will ensure I do my best work, even though I would have before, it only reinforced it.

The other is in our advising center, where Monday after class I'll be engaged in frenzied on the job training. We've got one of the largest undergrad programs for our field in the nation, and if someone has a minor, they come to our advising center as well. If you're on academic probation, you come see us as well on a bi-weekly basis. If you're changing majors into ours, you come see us as well. If you're wanting to repeat a class, you come see us as well. And we also make sure people have the classes to graduate on time. It's going to be consistently busy work, but rewarding to an extent I think. It will also give me a chance to get to know all eighteen members of the faculty for our department, instead of the handful I'll have for classes in the next two years.

Hard but rewarding work I'm sure. In all honesty, what has given me hope for the future in the past four or five years has been dual; my ex is the first and my professors have been my second. She loved me and I loved her, we believe in each other still I think, as human beings, and that we will both go forward and be the people that God wants us to be. The professors made me realize that I could actually do something with my life, and that my opinions were not always wrong as my father has hammered into me for more than two decades. They taught me not merely facts, but also what I had been missing out on as a human being; of all I have learned thus far in six years of higher education and with two degrees, the knowledge that I'm not doomed to be a pale and hollow shadow of humanity is the greatest thing I have gleaned. If, after getting my doctorate, I can even help one person the way that my teachers helped me, then all this hard work will have been worth it.

So here, my friends, if any of you actually read this still, is to the future. May I be the person that those teachers and my ex seem to think I can one day be, and may I become what God wants me to be. May I make friendships stronger than those who have gone before if possible, and maybe if I'm lucky, I can find love once more (but not undergraduate love, that would get me fired...and I don't mean love as in sex) to help fill the void.