He's Up To Something

This is from a while ago, but I still wanted to write about it.

I skipped class. Whoops, sorry! Okay, not that sorry. It was History of Chinese Civilization, and I had all of this other stuff to do, and I was more productive during that time than I would have been in class, that's for sure. Solitaire, I'm looking at you. So, yeah, my regret is limited. Before I went back to Gregory to revel in academia, I ate lunch in Houston with some friends from my hall that I ran into. At first everything was pretty standard for a conversation with Gregory people. Weird, oddly pointless despite the intellectual footholds people were using for arguments--no big deal. But all of a sudden, my friend K. was like, "I just realized now how much life really sucks." And one of our other friends was like, "Well, yeah." But this wasn't just a moment where someone gets annoyed because they didn't get something that they wanted, or because they just missed out on something, or whatever. This chick was straight up having a mini existential crisis right next to me. "Life sucks, and it never gets any better." I..just sat there. I had a bunch of different thoughts going through my head, but I didn't know how to attempt comforting this friend without sounding preachy. I know why I'm here, maybe not specifically, but I know Someone who has a plan for me. How am I supposed to share this with my friends in a way that won't make them want to run away from me? The more I think about it, the more I start to wonder if I should have just told her anyway. Everyone in Gregory that knows me knows that I'm a Christian, so it's not like it'd be this out-of-the-box thing for me to say. I think that if it had just been the two of us, I would have, but it wasn't just the two of us, so I guess I'll never know. Anyway, I'm kind of worried about this friend. I've heard of a few people this year who have had to just leave because they can't handle the pressure of Penn anymore, and all of them have been sophomores. I don't want her to have to do that; I mean, if she needs to, then by all means. But I really want to try to help her, you know? So, if you read this, give me some advice, please? ^^ Thanks.

I Love You.

Recently, certain things have prompted me to really examine my personality. These things include people commenting on how outgoing I am or on how many friends I have or how happy I am, but nothing forced me to actually think on all of these things together until Priscila informed me that I was going to be sharing my testimony for welcoming. Maybe to some of you sharing isn't such a big deal, but as I've already pointed out, sharing is not my favorite thing. When it comes to my testimony, I'm averse to sharing because it requires me to (however briefly) mention the status of my family and also dredges up bits and pieces of my past (not a k-drama melodramatic past or anything, but still. Stuff that contributed to my make-up. Foundational Octavia business.). After that bomb was dropped, I spent the rest of the week thinking about how to present my testimony. Would I sort of gloss it over with a quickie version, or would I try to be open? Again, some of you may have been super quick with that decision, but I really had to work to convince myself that being open with welcoming was a good thing and that it was going to be okay. When I started to think about my testimony I realized that everything was pretty short. Thinking back, there are a few things I didn't mention that maybe I could have (should have?). Regardless, I decided to sort of supplement the basic "and then I got saved" bit of my testimony with a way that God has actually been working in my life. This finally brings me back to what I was talking about at the beginning of this post.

Every time someone tells me how outgoing I am or comments on my friendly/outgoing/whatever personality, I mentally do a bit of a double-take. It's not like I try to be mean or anything--I do try to be nice to everyone. But people sometimes bring it up like it's...more than expected? I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, but I'm just going to go on. I was talking to a couple of the sisters a couple weeks ago, and in response to one of the things we were talking about one of them said, " I just don't understand why with your personality this is hard for you." And I was like, what the heck? What personality? And then I felt like I needed to procure a little piece of information that hinted at what a broken mess I really am on the inside. I don't know if anyone happened to see a few of my gchat statuses last week, but the general idea was "Everyone thinks I'm that version of myself so...am I?" Because now literally everyone thinks that I'm a friendly, happy, outgoing person who loves everyone, and I wasn't quite sure if I saw myself that way. I've had problems loving people in the past. Constant rejection will do that to a person. It wasn't just direct rejection like boy stuff, though there was plenty of that. As much as I tried to deny or ignore it, my parents' assorted divorces and remarriages have effectively wreaked havoc with my psyche, along with other family related drama. I used to really struggle with loving people because I knew I couldn't guarantee that they would always love me back. Whether I did a good job of hiding it or not, I was a heartbroken child for a really long time. Despite all that, God somehow changed my life while I wasn't looking. My family situation hasn't much improved, and as previously stated on this blog there are not, nor have there ever been any boys, but regardless God made me happy. He restored my capacity to love people, and He gave it back to me stronger than it had ever been (though a certain Wharton personality quiz will argue that I'm still limited in my capacity to love and be loved--screw Wharton).

Thanks to welcoming and that crazy, domineering, loving Priscila, I was finally able to understand a bit more of the prayer I got all the way back during AMI. All of this time I've continued to believe that I'm a broken person, and probably parts of me still are. But rejection just isn't my identity, at least not anymore. God was working in ways I hadn't even realized until now (whoa, I just started crying a little), and He made His love my identity. I'm just a little overwhelmed, because I've gone all this time thinking, Oh, God's made me a little more mature, a little happier. I didn't recognize myself when I first looked at myself during my testimony soul-searching time. I didn't recognize that He completely overhauled my entire personality and turned me into someone He can use. I've gone from not being able to really like anybody to desperately wanting to love everybody, regardless of whether or not they'll ever love me back. I'm definitely not perfect at it--I'm still extraordinarily insecure as to whether or not people really care about me, and the more I care about somebody the more insecure I am. Just ask Priscila how often I remind her to pay attention to me/love me/etc. It's only half-joking. In the case of some people in my class, I have trouble trying to reach out to them because I feel like they don't like me. I'm not a perfect love machine. But wow...am I better.

I know sometimes I digressed a bit, but...whatever.