It's day five and they tell us to pair off with someone with whom we've connected on a deeper level, and to take a walk and talk about our goals. I mention aloud that I have no idea who to partner with, and the person beside me suggests we just go ahead and partner up. We've really just met for the first time, and it's great timing, because I've just seen a major change in myself.

We walk down the gravel road to a dock on the water, and he leads me through the tall grass to a bench that looks over the lake, and it's so incredible and peaceful that we lose time and end up nearly missing our next session. I pour my soul out about some things. It feels normal. It isn't.

That night, we spend a good amount of time together with everyone else, playing games, dancing, talking outside in the late summer chill...and, walking back to our cabins, we make a pact to get up before everyone else and go for a run, which turns out to be a long walk that I wish could take even longer. We end up leaving off around 7:20 to shower and get ready for breakfast, and then sit together while he sips at coffee--cream and sugar, by the looks--and I munch on fruit and some dry French toast.

This week changed me, and it was entirely not because of this person. We met on the fifth day, after I'd already become someone entirely different, so he doesn't even know old me. I feel like my body is twenty-one but my mind has just been born.

I cry at graduation, with about sixty people I met less than a week ago. We have five families, each of which have spent so much time together, really talking and being honest with one another, that it feels completely normal to say that we love each other. When our family leader has us up at the front with him, he tells us in front of everyone--voice cracking--that we filled an enormous void in his heart, and we circle around him right then and there, all eleven of us, arms around each other, and we just cry in front of everyone, and they're crying too, and it's all so euphoric and honest. I'm halfway between a laugh and a sob the entire time.

The ride home is quiet and introspective. Clif and I are in the front seat, across the row from someone with whom I originally thought I might end up forming something romantic. He lays down in my lap and rests his eyes, and it doesn't occur to me until later that, before this week, that wouldn't have been something I would offer--and that, before this week, my mind would have been on the other person, rather than the open soul resting in my lap.

I think I relearned humanity and vulnerability, this week. It's so hard--after living through years of rejection, half truths, complete lies--to put myself out there and just let people see me in my entirety, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do that, and that people just...were. They didn't place judgement on one another, they didn't express hate...it was just all peace and appreciation.

I told Andrew, who was sitting behind us, that he should just trust that people are being sincere. He was texting someone he just met and really found interest in, after having a hard night of serious doubt about reciprocation. Clif nodded emphatically, but he doesn't see things through my lens, so he can't possibly know how ridiculously new this all is to me. I've never before told anyone to trust that others are sincere. I've never trusted in that.

On top of all these amazing, new things, I scraped my knee for the first time since I was probably seven. I wrestled with people, and laughed until I was crying, and didn't feel any need to impress anyone. I have a bruise the size of my forearm on my leg from being boosted over a twelve foot high wall, and several people told me it was beautiful and that it looked like outer space.

So it goes.

I'm not releasing my grasp on this new trust in people, so I hope you're ready for my honesty.


And I'm so ready to get back into town after California and see him again.

What a nice entry. I almost didn't want to comment at all because it is so introspective and personal and complete and well expressed. I recently had an argument with some of my church friends about whether mankind was more good or more evil. I argued on the side of "more good". I talked about it with the youth leader and he said that for most of his life he was on the side of "more evil", and it was only recently that he started to believe that mankind was fundamentally imperfect but good. I feel like all you can really do is trust people, and the more you trust that they are good, the better they often are.

ps: I totally want a bruise that looks like space.
» Zanzibar on 2013-05-12 07:05:01

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