My Love-Hate Relationship with Change and Thinking Forward.

Exams are awful. I feel terrible for starting a blog and abandoning it in the name of things I hate so soon into the process. It's summer now though, so hopefully I'll be less of a horrible person for the next few months. It's also Easter weekend, and I have been saving things up for you, so hopefully I will make up for it in the next couple days.

It's the end of another term of school. People are heading off to do cool things and be places that aren't down the street any more. This has me thinking about my love-hate relationship with change.

I grew up (mostly) in one house. Nothing changed. I went to school by bus every single day, had class with the same people, and came home to a fairly easy life. 'Stability' would actually describe my childhood well. It was then that I got used to the idea of comfort and security. Change was pretty much non-existent. I grew up, learned new math and grammar, but nothing really changed in a real sense of the word.

That, of course, as anyone who knows me well would tell you, had to change. It changed when a few of my best friends were kicked onto the streets. I became interested in things like music, and friends grew apart. Not overly surprizing for the age. Not overly traumatic. But not necessarily what I was used to either.

More traumatic (though, I hesitate to use such a dramatic term) was my dad's departure to Bosnia with a peace-keeping, mine-removal group there, and, worse, his return. Not to get too far into the depressing story, I'll summarize, saying he found a very dark world there, which changed our family. As a result was the separation of my family, multiple moves from apartment to apartment, dad moving in and out. Stability became about as far the truth as I could get, and I hated this.

I took in stability from the group of people I spent time with at school. Each morning, afternoon, lunch hour, was spent with the same people in the same room of the school, to make up for the instability I found at home.

High school ended, and I moved into university residence. I had been excited for university, thinking it would offer a more stable place, but soon realized that it was not necessarily this way. Just when I got comfortable, I would be changing again--from switching classes, to switching roommates, things changed every four months for the first two years. You'd think this would be easy for me to deal with given the changes of high school, but that wasn't the case.

And now, I've lived in the same apartment (given, not the same room) for a year. I'm going back to the same job this summer as last. I sit at the same caf table every single day and get confused if it is taken. And I can't stand it.

I've noticed recently that I'm super restless. In January, I got myself a piercing in an old guy's basement. Weeks later, I chopped off my hair. Later, more piercings, and more recently changed my hair colour. None of these things have helped. I feel like I'm going stir crazy, and don't think there are many places I really want pierced left.

I don't know what's better-- when things aren't stable, I'm depressed and uneasy; when things are stable, I begin to feel restless.

Many of my closest friends are off doing amazing and wonderful things this summer. I am here, disliking the change that they have left, and disliking my own stability in job and habitat. I wonder, is this normal? I wonder, is this important to make sure I'm always pushing for the best I can squeeze out of life?

The end of term is stressing me out. I will be missing staying up late with long discussions about God or love or grammar or politics. I will miss the 15 minute walks to be with any of my friends, and the late night BBM messages. It takes time and energy to build the friendships that I have in Waterloo, and the trust I have with them. I know everyone will be back come fall, or even sooner, but I have been incredibly thankful for the friendships this year, and the rock that they have been through my time trying to make it in the real world. Trying to learn to interact from afar will be a new adjustment, one I'm not sure I want to be ready for. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could all sit around in residence without the school work? It makes me scared, yet excited for the prospect of graduation, the next part of life. With the exciting things that are happening this summer, and the stories we will share through the summer and when we all return, I wonder what we will end up doing after graduation. That said, I dread the goodbyes enough now. Hopefully this summer is good practise for me.

I can't believe I was scheduled to graduate now. I can't believe how glad I am that I'm not graduating now. I want to remember this in the coming year. I want to remember that I can, and do, see the beauty in my university experience. Its a shame it took til third year.

This was a ramble and a half, I think.
Maybe I'll be less all over the place next time.
Also, I'm thinking a few more posts in the next few days: stay tuned.