There and Back Again.

January 5th marked a strange day in my life.  It was the beginning of the winter quarter at Sullivan and I wasn't in Kentucky.  One year ago, I was sitting in an airport, waiting for my delayed flight, headed back to Kentucky after Christmas break.  This year I was watching my friends and family go back to school and work as I stayed in my pajamas till noon.  That's when it really hit me.  I was done with Kentucky.

Despite my grumblings (and yes, there were a lot of them), Kentucky had become my home.  My pictures hung on the walls there, people who make me smile and laugh are there, and there were three happy animals ready to greet me every day.  I worked there, I lived there, it was my home for over a year.

Then my pictures were in boxes, I had said farewell to my friends and had one last hoorah, the animals had successfully hidden in my luggage, I quit my job, I packed my stuff, and I didn't call it home anymore.

Now it is strange, living somewhere I haven't called home in over a year.  I'm not the same person, which is horribly cliched to say, but accurate. In someways I'm better, and in some ways, worse.  I needed to come back to Michigan to heal myself, but I needed Kentucky to break me.

I needed the wake up call that Kentucky gave me, both the good and bad ones.  The realization that I really can do anything for eleven weeks, I really can do this career, I am really not as good as I thought I was, and I really need a lot more help than I let on.

The people I met in Kentucky have changed me forever, whether it me the boys who harassed me for months, or the instructor that literally held me as I cried out for help.  I wouldn't be who I am right now without them.

My time in school not only taught me how to sous-vide a duck breast, but also how to handle life and its curve balls... and there were plenty.  A long distance relationship was started six months early, a suburban girl was thrown into a big city, a fear of abandonment was kicked into overdrive, and I survived my hardest year yet.

There have been days when I regret what happened in Kentucky, who I was there, things that I said, or decisions made under the circumstances.  There are days I wish I had never left Michigan.  But today, as I write this on the brink of starting a new job and more life changes, I miss Kentucky.  The normality that I had become accustomed to is now gone.  I have to find a new normal, and I'm not good with transitions.

Today, I want to be back in my musty apartment, making dinner for myself and getting my uniform ready for tomorrow. Instead I am sitting in my room, with my friend, Erika, sitting on my bed playing music, waiting for my mom to finish my dinner, and dreading driving to my first day of work tomorrow.

In two months, I won't remember what I am feeling at this very moment.  I'll have found my new normal and will be content with it and happier than I ever was in Kentucky.  But that is not today. Today is strange because I was there and now I am back again.

Endings.

I don't like endings.  Of any kind.  I'll put down a book I really like for months because I don't want to read the final chapters, and see it finally come to an end.  I'll leave it sitting on my shelf, full of possibilities, full of unread words that could potentially change my life.  I like it better that way, leaving it some-what unknown, just so that I won't be disappointed.  Because those are the worst kind of endings.  The disappointing ones.

Ending, much like goodbyes, are a necessary part of living.  You can't go on with your life with dozens of unfinished books on your shelves.  Things have to come to an end, and you will both be delighted and disappointed with the endings.

I have seen many endings, in my admittedly short life.  The end of friendships, jobs, relationships, families, childhoods, seasons of life, and life itself. Some I have just seen, and some I have personally felt. These endings have caused me to grow in ways I could never have imagined. Forcing me to wake up and realize that life is real, and it is brutally beautiful.  I didn't want any of these endings. If it were up to me, I would have put these things back on the shelf with a chapter or two to go, so that they never had to end. So that I could hold on to them forever and keep them just the way I want. Stopping them when they are perfect. 

But who would I be if those chapters never ended? Who would you be?

Would you still be sitting behind that desk at the job that you hate, instead of owning your own business? Would you still be dating your high school sweetheart, instead of your now spouse? Would you still be living with your parents, instead of leaving for college or moving out?

These are all endings that we want to happen! Very few of us are sitting here reading those going... Man, I wish that wouldn't have ended. No, instead we are happy that those times in our lives are over, though it may be bittersweet looking back on how easy it was to work that 9-5 desk job, or how nice it was to have a live-in cook and maid (love you mom). In this sense, endings are good, and we welcome them. Then there are the endings that cause us to question what our lives mean and why these things happen. 

The messy end of a relationship, dating or marital, that one thought would last forever. The abrupt end to a once blossoming career. The end of a childhood over just a few weeks, forcing someone, who was not yet ready, to become more mature than someone should ever have to be at that age.  The end of a life, whether is be sudden and wrenching, or a slow decline and decay of said life. 

These are the endings that cause us to ask the question; "why?" They cause us to question God's plan for us, or for some, even his excistance. We don't understand until given time and perspective. 

I don't know why there are bad endings, why some things, when they end, leave us feeling so hollow. While other endings give us tramendous hope for the future. In a perfect would, there would only be good endings. You wouldn't have to fear the last few pages of the book. You would know that everything would be okay.  But we don't live in said perfect world. 

Before he left for bootcamp, AJ said something that stuck with me;

"Your options are: 1. Accept your own helplessness. 2. There is no option 2." 

We cannot control how and when things end, but we can control how we deal with them.  We can sit in denial and demand things go back to the way they were, or we can strive forward, knowing that some way, some how, things will be okay if we put our trust in God.