"Nobody understands."

FFC youth group got back from Stronghold this afternoon.  I got 3 calls once they got their phones back on the bus.  Those three phone calls, along with one more and a Skype call later on, made my day.  I felt so special that they still wanted to call me and tell me about everything even though I couldn't be there.  I loved that Hadley had the entire bus say hi to me.  I loved that Michelle was getting journals taken away from her cause she was talking to me and not writing.  I loved that Alyssa was still crying and that she handed the phone to Matt to talk to me as a surprise.  I was so glad to catch them such a short time after leaving Stronghold so that they all still had that Stronghold attitude going.  I felt so blessed that they called me that I literally broke down crying once Hadley had everyone say hi to me, and didn't stop until a couple minutes after hanging up with Matt.

Once they were home, Michelle and Alyssa Skyped me and gave me a quick run-down of the first day before I had to go to a group project meeting.  They were still so Stronghold, and I loved seeing that in both of them.

After chapter, I talked to Hadley on the phone, and we cried together, each cuddled up on our own bed, on the phone for over an hour.  I loved this.  I loved hearing how Stronghold was different, but still so much the same.  I literally can not get over her honesty.  I just love it and it is so refreshing all the time.  Even with things about Stronghold, where there are serious emotions flowing, I was thankful that she let it all out.  We cried about promises and experiences and words and conversations and hugs and crying and lasts and the past and the future and her being a senior next year.  She thinks she's not ready and that she won't do well, but I just wish she knew the potential I see in her.  I am so certain that she will make her senior Stronghold exactly what it should be.  It's a scary thing for sure, but she's grown so much, even since last March, that I am confident in her as a leader of FFCYG.

Hadley said it so simply, but so correctly, "Nobody understands."

It's too true.  Unless you've been there with FFC, you can not understand all that Stronghold is.  And that is so frustrating, especially when you come back and want to be different from before and want everything to be as great at home as it was at Stronghold.  I don't know the answer or the best solution to this, but I think the fact that it is so different is what makes it so special.

I was listening to my Stronghold playlist today, and for the first time, realized how great these lyrics are.

it's like the best days under the sun every emotion rolled into one.

a little of this a little of that,

kinda happy, kinda sad.

oh man, we were living 

going crazy in the kitchen, 

we danced and screamed and held each other tight.

we laughed until we cried.

when all you want to do is go back, the hardest thing to do is move forward.

I got nothing done today.

I say this all the time, but today it is true.

I got nothing done today because there was not even ten minutes that went by when I didn't think about all of my youth group friends who are at Stronghold this weekend.  I was in the library this morning and I knew exactly what they were doing, and I wanted nothing more than to be with them instead of studying for my chemistry midterm.  I was working this afternoon and the entire time, all I could think about was tie-dying and candle-making and river-walking and friendship-braceleting and dance-partying.  I was trying to do homework tonight but could only think about what happens after dinner.  I was trying to brush my teeth a few minutes ago, but purely broke down and started crying in the bathroom cause I wanted to be there with everyone and experience everything that I knew was going on.  This may sound crazy, but I still felt all the emotions I would have, had I been there.  I just want to get back home this coming weekend and see and hug and cry with everyone.

All I'll be doing Sunday night and Monday and basically the rest of this week is creeping on all of the pictures and wall posts and statuses that everyone will be adding to Facebook post-Stronghold.  I just want to know everything that went on.

I obviously struggle with moving on.  I found this quote a little less than a year ago, and I thought it was very true of me:

"When all you want to do is go back, the hardest thing to do is move forward."

I know that I am not meant to be at Stronghold this year.  I've had my five years.  But I just can't figure out how to move on at this point.  I loved Stronghold (and I still do) because it was always that place where I could go and refocus my life and talk about real life issues with friends who loved me and wouldn't judge me.  I loved that friendships just happen at Stronghold.  My friendship with Hadley shot up like 77% percent last year at Stronghold, and I don't even really know how or why, but I just don't question it.

I think right now I just want to go back to the way things were so badly because I don't know what my life is right now.  Meaning, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing or what my purpose is here.  I feel like my life is meaningless, and all I do is homework and school stuff.  I need a cure for my common life, and Stronghold was always such a refresher in my life, and I don't get that this year.

I wish I could say I have a solution, because after all of that, I feel like this is the place where I insert my plan of what I am going to do to change everything, but I just do not know.  I do not know what to do.  I want to really be okay that my Stronghold years are over.  I tell myself that I'm okay with it, but my heart just isn't.  I want to feel alive and like I'm living and actually doing something productive with my life.  But the only things I can focus on are moments like these...

 

and other ones that didn't get documented.  I am glad that spring break is next week and I'll have ten days to hear all about Stronghold from my friends, and especially the seniors, who I hope embraced the lasts of Stronghold.  

I love Stronghold.

Stress + Skype = Smiles

Today my stress level finally went down.  I've had so many tests and essays and group projects and lab reports over the past month that I can honestly say I have not been myself since about the middle of February.  I hate being stressed and I hate what it does to me.  I shut out everything that I really love about my life, like friends, working out, watching Glee, reading non-school books, blogging, and just work my butt off doing whichever assignment is due next.  I run myself so hard that I start falling asleep in class and never being able to focus for more than fifteen minutes.  I know this is unhealthy, but I'm still working on a normal way to deal with stress.  

Another awful side effect of being stressed is that I feel like I have literally no emotion.  I would see or hear things that usually cause me to break down, and they would have no effect on me.  It was so strange, and I didn't like it at all.  It took something that Hadley wrote about our friendship to break down the stone walls of stress that were blocking my heart out.  I love Hadley so much and I am thankful for our friendship every time we get to talk.  Just like all of my other friendships, it's been nothing but struggles to keep our friendship paddle boats moving along side each other, and not drifting away.  She'll be headed off to Stronghold tomorrow, and I know that she will be an amazing leader and friend and ball of fun as a junior, while also learning tons from the seniors.   My entire weekend will be consumed with thoughts of all of my friends at Stronghold.  

Today, after my test, I got to Skype with Hadley.

I hate that I have to schedule her in, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  I love her and the fact that she's so honest about life.  She plays no games with me and I always know what's on her mind and on her heart.  I really cherish that about our friendship.  

Then after class and dinner, I got to Skype with muh gurl Michelle.  I like her bubbly-ness and the hilarious faces she makes when "someone" smells not exactly like a dozen roses.   

Then we had a photo shoot...

She's so presh and I love her heart and that she always has it in the right place.  We did some solid chemistry homework together and she forgot to show me her Stronghold buddy gifts.  I'm excited for the opportunities that Stronghold holds for her this year.  She's so amazing, and I wish she believed that.  

There's nothing about friendship I love more than a real live face-to-face heart-to-hearts, but since that's not really practical for us, I'm thankful for the invention of Skype.