Y'know...the full force of highschool life is finally hitting me. I spend every spare minute catching up on homework that was due last week, when I'm not doing that I am rebelling against my human need to sleep by staying up late just so that I can then read the books that *I* want to read.
So yes, I am always doing school...well, almost always. When I am not doing school I am normally doing some sort of what not with my Catholic homeschool group or my Catholic youth group. Yep, religion is my north, and school is my south. I rarely do much more than math related studies on friday due to the fact that I find myself going to a social, service, or religious retreat with F.I.S.C.H.E. (afore mentioned homeschool group). Every now and then I will get thrown off by a all out retreat, you know, the overnight kind?
DCYC happened the weekend before this past. On friday I piled into an RV with...9? other people...yeah, I think it was 9. Anyway, whatever the number, we all hopped into the RV and were off (thanks to Mr. and Mrs. H for putting up with 8 teenage girls!). The drive was about an hour and a half of bouncing amusement. I might be guilty of falling off the bed in the bad at one point, while E would've done the same had I not caught her. We did, however, all arrive in one piece (each, of course).
Once at DCYC I set out on a mission to see a couple of my friends who I had not seen in 6 months. I was most grateful to find one of them within the first half hour of our arrival. This was the beginning to a delightful weekend. Around an hour after arriving we got rushed into a big concert-y room that had deafening music playing...the music mightn't have been too loud if there hadn't been 2000+ teenagers singing at the top of their voices.
The weekend seemed shorter than some of the retreats I had been to (maybe because it was a convention?). Yet, somehow, Saturday felt like the longest day I have ever experienced. The F.I.S.C.H.E.-y peoples stayed together for the first talk we went to (Saints Among Us), but we broke up after lunch for the second talk. For the second talk I found myself sitting in the dining hall with a whole bunch of girls waiting to hear a talk entitled Secrets of a Godly Woman.
Yeah, it was about chastity. As pretty much all 'girls only' talks are. But the talk was nice, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I wont go into detail, because I doubt you want to hear about a talk second hand. But it was cool.
After the second talk we all went back into the big concert-y like room and there was more loud music. After the music we got another more different talk, and then we had adoration. Adoration was very nice, and it was rather apparent that it moved quite a few of the people there. I enjoyed the chance for adoration, and after that I got in line with some friends for confession.
Oh yes, I waited in line for about an hour. I was an hour and a half away from my home parish. There were about eight of nine priests there hearing confessions...and I still got Fr. Jonathan, my parish priest. Go figure.
The next morning we went to Mass, got lunch, and then headed home. The ride home was fun, but we were all rather tired, and I'm pretty sure three of the girls slept on the way home.
Yes, I do have a reason for telling you this story. You see, I never really thought I would go on retreats. It hit me earlier that I have gone on so many retreats since I moved here to Texas, and I had only ever gone to one back in North Carolina. I never really thought about being a teenager. I never thought about highschool. I also never thought about moving from my little town of Saluda.
Yet here I am. I realize that it all happened so fast, I went to bed one day a child, and I woke up here. I'm not complaining. I like my life. I have a loving family around me...for the most part. I have wonderful friends. I have my baby (don't freak out, she's a cat).
Some days I wish I could go back to the time when I was a child...but then I think, how far back would I go? Would I go to when I was younger than eight? Before the house burned down and my grandfathers died? No...then I would have to see it happen again. Would I go to right after that happened? To when we lived in the rent house? No, I couldn't do that either. I don't want to live in the time where we were still grieving the loss of Grandaddy and Papa Joe. I realize that I can't go back.
And even if I could change the past, I ask myself, would I? And I can honestly say no. I could never change the deaths I have seen, sooner or later they would die again. I would never change the fact that our house burned down, if I did, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't know the wonderful people I know now.
But sometimes I do wish I still had the innocent naiveness that one can see when they look in the eyes of a child. That, I do miss. And to think...I am halfway done with my freshman year of highschool. Wow. That went by very fast. I will wake up tomorrow, and it will be next semester, and I will be lonely without all of my senior friends. And I will go to sleep wondering "what if?", only to wake up the next day and it by my first day of school as a junior. This time all of my friends that are now juniors will have graduated and gone on. I will go to sleep and wake up yet again, and I will be a senior...all of my friends that are but sophomores right now, they will be gone. And then do you know what? I will go to sleep, and I will wake up once more....but this time, this time I will be the one leaving my friends behind. There will be people that (hopefully...) will miss me as much as I will miss my senior friends when I wake up and they are gone.
This is my reality, this is how fast time flies. To imagine the days whenever I would play in the woods with my friends and we would think that we would be together forever. Now they are hundreds of miles away, back in little old Saluda. Soon, that is how my highschool friends will be.
But still, I would not change that either. For if I change anything, I would not know the people I know now, and I would never know the people I have yet to meet. Everything happens for a reason. And I thank God for all the bad things that have happened, for they brought me so much good in the end.
