I wouldn't have a world...

I am at a place in my life which I have never been before.

Let me retrace my steps and tell you how I got here.

One year ago exactly, I was leaving Green Acre Baha'i School, in Eliot, Maine. I had served there for about six months, working mostly in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning and serving food to guests. For those who may not know, Green Acre is a Baha'i School, almost like a retreat and conference center, where Baha'is (and non-Baha'is welcome too!) come for different sessions on different topics. In the winter months, there is usually a three-day session once a week. So in the off days, we worked, but I really struggled with seeing what my service to this school was and how I was contributing to the building a better world. I decided to leave Green Acre because Green Acre was a little boring for me and lacked the type of service I wanted to be putting my efforts into. I wanted to be out there in the world, working with people, working to bring joy and happiness into others lives, and therefore bringing it into my life. So I left Green Acre.

And I want to say how much I do not regret going to Green Acre. 

After I tell a lot of people how the service was there, they ask me if I think it was even worth going. A wholehearted yes is what I respond with. Because the people I met at Green Acre have guided me, and made me into the person I am today. And I didn't realize it until I left Green Acre, and until I have continued those friendships in the past year, and how they have grown stronger then ever despite the distance between me and them. There are a few people I am referring to here, but I want to emphasize one person who has changed my life in every single possible way.

To suppress the long, sometimes dramatic, and probably way too personal details, the thing that sums this friendship all up for me, is at one point, I remember telling Celena that she was family. She had defined what family was for me, and in doing so has strengthened my relationship with my own family. 

This defied all I had ever understood friendship to be.

This defied all I had ever understood any relationship to be.

Somehow a friend had become a family member, a sister, and I had never even really understood what family meant before this.

This became a paradox in my life.

Because my relationship with my family was skewed and I had essentially never understood what family meant, how could I tell this girl I had known for six months that she had become my family?

It stuck with me, because I told her she was family without even recognizing the sizable, momentous, proportionally HUGE this statement was for someone like me.

I guess it took me back to falling in love. Falling in love for me was something that just happened, and I learned the details and understood it only afterwards. And after saying I love you, or in this case, after telling Celena she became family, my heart, my mind, my life opened like an automatic door.

After saying I love you, I felt more love for ALL the people around me.

And after telling Celena she was family, it invited more people into my life, and more importantly, it opened my previously shut out family into my life.

Let me quickly show you where I stood before all this: other people, relationships, friends, family, etc, were something I always figured I was better off without. The number of friends I have had and taken for granted and hurt is numerous. People hurt me, and had led me to distrust other people, and the more I distrusted people, the more people distrusted me. I was in a cycle of hurt others, and others will hurt me. The reason I went to Utah, my reasoning for going to Alaska for a summer, the reason I went to Iceland, the reason I left Utah, the reason I went to Green Acre, was ALL to escape hurt. Hurt that people had caused me, and I was so convinced that running away would evade all this HURT that relationships seemed to always cause (this is a whole different topic, I will spare you the details but can say my view on the people in my life was messed-up, completely selfish, and I caused more hurt then others had probably caused me).

Fast-forward to Baltimore, where I moved after Maine. I moved to Baltimore to serve the Junior Youth Empowerment Program, and threw my heart into it with all my might. I was excited to be putting my whole being into something I believed in. I believed, I believe, in the JY program with all my heart, and the service I was able to contribute back to the community quickly became my purpose to life, my whole self. I opened my heart more and more, on a daily basis. My junior youth became what I imagine it feels like to have your own children. I developed a support system in Baltimore from the Baha'is who were surrounding me and uplifting me to serve. I was surrounded with love and happiness in a city where some people are convinced love and happiness don't much exist. This led me to a final send-out of my one full year of service to the Baha'i Faith, and ultimately to the world. In August 2013, the Youth conference in DC was four full days of the most blissful people I have ever seen grouped together. Four full days of discussing the potential of our time of youth, and planning for how we can use our energies to expand and uplift the hearts of the world.

And then suddenly, I was thrown back into the real world,

where not everyone forgives your mistakes, 

has patience during your struggles,

and loves you despite your shortcomings.

I started school again for the first time in over a year, excitedly and finally ready and decisive on a path I wanted my life to go. I was still in Baltimore, where I have grown comfortable, but reality is reality. Not that service was not reality, because service in Baltimore had exposed me to the majority of the world's reality, a reality of strife and pain and struggle that I had never been immersed in before. But I am realizing now that going back to school became hard because I wasn't surrounded by the cushion-y love and support from the people who supported me at Green Acre, and then the people who had supported me in my service in Baltimore. Of course all these people are in my life still, but not in the constant way they were as we worked and served alongside each other. 

I started falling down into a hole inside my mind, losing steam by the end of the semester for everything I had become so passionate about. Winter break couldn't come soon enough, and I didn't get the grades I was hoping to get, which came as quite a warning sign to me that I needed to get myself back on track if I wanted to take my education to the level I wanted it to be at. 

And winter break was full of more love and I was surrounded by more special people in my life then I could have imagined. 

I think I saw every person (give or take a few) who has been such an influence in my life in the past year. Seeing these people, having them remind me who I am just by being who they are inspires me, motivates me, and gives me the support I need to lead the life I want to lead. I feel like my first semester  here in Baltimore I lost track of it all, and tried so hard to focus myself on my career, my career, my career. Even service became overwhelming at points, I went a month without seeing my Junior Youth group because I was too overwhelmed and too afraid of failing the criteria I had set for myself. Winter break refreshed me to the people who are in my life, who I maybe don't see as often, but who are there 100% for me nevertheless. 

And here I am.

A year after all that.

And I'm happy.

I've said that before, but I think I mean it now more then ever.

And that happiness is attributed to the people who have been in my life and who have shown me what relationships and friendships mean. It started with one person really, and has grown into a family of people. I'm no where near the kind of friend, family member or person I want to be. I think my life will always be a struggle of striving to be of love and service to the people around me. But I am happy with who I am because of the people who have guided me to who I am.

I'm here.

I'm at the start of a fresh semester of school, with my vision clearer then ever of who I want to be, not only professionally, but as a person. I want to be a combination of all the people in my life. Last but not least, I really struggle to communicate to those around me how much they mean to me. I feel like a lot of the people who are not so much in my life anymore are not there because of miscommunication. I want the people in my life to know how much they mean to me, and sometimes I overemphasize it now because of who I was in the past, and how little I told the people in my life how much they meant to me. I've got so much love inside me for the people around me, and I owe you the world. Literally. I wouldn't have a world if it weren't for you.

<3 S