As I begin to write this, a cricket crawls along my arm. It has been chirping off and on for the past few hours (it's now 3 A.M. or so) and now I've finally found it.
I have no electricity in my home; it is one of the oldest homes in town, and the electrical system blew altogether. I stayed in a hotel last night with my mom, my partner, and a friend to charge up some of the stuff. I have been going to the library to charge my laptop and using my phone as a hotspot. We are saving up for an RV since we are no longer paying rent; the landlord cannot legally evict us at the moment, because it would be considered retaliation for our complaints about the electricity. So, in a few months, we should have an RV, and we will do lots of travelling. It has been a dream of mine for the longest time to visit New York City; hopefully, I will be able to see it soon enough.
When I first started college I was seventeen. I had gotten a GED because I felt high school was holding me back; I wanted to make some money and work on my education. However, my mental health and living situation at the time were not in a good place, and my support network was very weak. I was overambitious and trying to do too many things at once. I had to drop out and go to the hospital. Don't get me wrong - the hospital was a wonderful place; I read Byron Katie and Fran Drescher, ate amazing meals, met some interesting people, learned to cope with my emotions, and did ju-jitsu and art therapy.
I have tried college three times now. The first time is as described above. The second time was similar; I was mentally out of touch with reality and had to go to the hospital again. I tried Job Corps as well. I went to the Tongue Point center in Astoria: one of the oldest in the country, an old naval grounds (which definitely means it's haunted), and to the best of my knowledge, it is the only center in America which offers training in the seamanship trades. I personally went to for there computers program; I wanted to become a database architect, and I figured the free advanced training in cybersecurity they offered to their graduates was close enough. However, I had to, yet again, go on a long medical leave. Then, it turned out that wasn't even what I wanted to do with my life. I missed my family; I missed my home. I have spent most of my life in the Douglas County bubble, and suddenly I was over two hundred miles away from everything I knew. I wasn't ready for it.
The last time I tried college, I was finally ready. The first time I had went, I focused on socializing and making friends. Yet, I was delusional, and believed everyone wanted to kill me. It was somewhat ironic. This last time, I didn't socialize as much, but I did participate in a few recreational activities, and I felt that the interactions I had were much more mature. What's most important, however, is that I actually got perfect grades. I was very proud of myself. However, I was in the process of appealing my financial aid, as my previous attempts made me inelligible to receive money. I am confident I would have been approved, but the only thing standing in my way was a letter from my psychiatrist to clear me for school. He had done this for me in the past when I needed to go back to Job Corps; he was always very helpful, and so I thought it wouldn't be an issue. Sadly, Dr. Michael McNamara was met with a very untimely and early death.
The moral of the story, I guess, is that in the grand scheme of things, my mental health, maturity level, and life are getting better and better. I remember when I was a kid. I had to fall off my bike at least a dozen times before I learned how to ride it properly. I was six years old. I could have just given up, but then I wouldn't have known the freedom of riding a bike or the taste of wind streaming into my face as I rode across town
Takeaway
What do I take away from this? Well, God has a plan for me, and that plan looks a lot different than I imagined it would when I was seventeen. I thought I could go to college for a few years, move across the country, and life would be set. It's funny how naïve that sounds now, but that's the mental image I had in my mind. I thought everything would go my way, and for the longest time I wondered why it didn't. But I realize now that everything that has happened to me is better than the millions of could-have-beens, simply because it is.We truly do live in the best of all possible worlds. I had to swallow a lot of pills and eat some humble pie, but in the end I survived, and came out stronger and more sincere than I went in.
If I could go back and do it all over again, I would not. We do not get redoes in life, unlike in video games, and that is what makes it so special: it is fleeting, it is right here, and it is right now. We have a saying, in Esperanto: "neniam interŝanĝu fenikson kontraŭ ĝiaj cindroj" - "never trade a phoenix for its ashes.
I consider this all to be a part of my testimony of God, who I have grown much closer to in recent years. At seventeen - I was an absolute heathen; I thought I knew God, but really I didn't: I held only an image of my own vanity I mistook for his. So, it is with great tenderness that I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.