What are you fighting for?

This past week has been a week of breaking down, and building back up. I began the Student Leadership Institute on Wednesday with the idea that it would be good for me to learn some new leadership skills and to learn more about the people around me. I got far more out of it than I ever imagined I might. 

 Wednesday began normally enough. I went to school, sat through the opening of SLI, and had a good first half of the day. But then we went to lunch, and I just couldn't shake this feeling I was having, and three words kept beating time through my head..."learn, unlearn, relearn." We came back to the session after lunch, and I found myself having a harder time with each new activity we began. I wanted to participate, but having been inside myself and insular for so long, I was uncomfortable in the space, and I really just wanted to go somewhere a little less populated. I wanted to be able to compose myself and come bak to things. But there was no opportunity to do so. And then we began talking about core values, and what mine meant to and for me. I knew what they were, I thought, but I realized that I didn't know why. We talked about our personal coat of arms, and mine felt superficial and insincere. I left the day confused, frustrated, and under the distinct realization that I was not sure who exactly I had come to be by the age of thirty. The last thing of the day was to write one thing we learned, unlearned, or relearned that day. I wrote the following: "I unlearned who I am at the very core today."

I went home that night, talked to Toby about how I felt. We discussed the age gap between other students and myself, but I'm not necessarily convinced that it is such a profound difference. We are all people, we all heard the same things in that same room that same day. Yet I was physically moved and unnerved. I closed my bedroom door and cried for hours that night. 

I awoke the next morning with a hungover feeling, as if I had been binge drinking the night before. I think I was just drunk with questions about myself. I headed to school for another day of SLI, and we spent the day in an urban scavenger hunt. We had a debriefing session afterward, and although I opened up more than I anticipated I would, the day really just served to pronounce my doubts and frustrations all the more.  I went home that night exhausted, but spent it talking to Toby again. I cried some more, and I still couldn't quite understand why I couldn't stop. We talked about how hard it has been to find my way in my life, to understand myself on a basic level, because most of my adult life has been spent in survival mode. I realized that this is the first opportunity I have ever had to lay down my guard. I don't trust. Not anyone, really. There are a lot of deep-seated reasons for my mistrust of the world at large, but it boils down to my having been hurt over and over all my life. It's my coping mechanism. 

The third day was a breaking point for me. I went to the session that morning, and there was a panel of speakers. I found myself listening intently to what they all had to say about various things, and with each new speaker came a new set of questions I began to write down and ask myself. I felt my heart begin to sink at the enormity of it all, and I walked away from the panel unsure of the direction I wanted to take next. I encountered the campus pastor on my way back down to the Diversity Center, and something inside me snapped. For the first time in my entire adult life I poured out information I had never told a stranger before. I sobbed uncontrollably, and I am sure that the poor guy really just didn't know what to do for me. I went to the dCenter and talked to some of the people in there. Jake and Eva both made me feel a bit better about what I had just done. Eva even told me that she and Jess used to talk about how I would have to break at some point to be successful. How could I not have known this? Why was I so blind to so much before? 

So now I have a ton of questions, and very few answers. I don't quite understand what to do next, and I am not sure how I will make it through the next couple of semesters if I don't find those answers I am seeking. But I have a direction to go, and I have a strong, albeit relatively small, support system to count on. That's more than I have ever had. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and I am grateful to have the understanding I have now. I have learned that much. There is so much more yet to come, I hope I know what to do with it in the coming hours, days, weeks, months, years...we'll see.