One chance

I cleaned my room this morning, including a re-organizing of dresser drawers. In one that was stuffed full of old uniforms, at the bottom I found four things that made me stop and really think for a bit. I found a letter Erin, my first girlfriend, wrote to me near the end of our short relationship, I found a letter Kelsey, my second girlfriend, wrote to me near the end of our relationship, I found my missionary tags and white handbook, warped and bent from being soaked so many times by rain, and I found a pair of Adrianna's earings. the only thing missing would have been a momento of Brenda and I would have had sitting before me an almost perfect representation of the past five years of my life. Between all those things and moments exist volumes about the growth I've been through since High School. I know I still have a long way to go. I'm still rather arrogant about a lot of things, and I could stand to be less confrontational. For much of my mission my goal was to be a more mellow person, to take things in stride more, to get less worked up over things that would go wrong, to be less confrontational, to argue less, to be more open with sharing myself, to be more secure with my own feelings. It was the end of Kelsey's letter that really caught my attention. The letter was written in journal format, then mailed ot me as an afterthought because she didn't want to keep it, knowing she would lose it and never continue it. This was almost a year before I left for Virginia.

"Maybe he is afraid of getting help. I think he is afraid of having fun. I can't even tell if he is ever happy. He has hope, but it is burried under his worry. I know I have hope that I will be okay... or maybe I just know I'll be okay... eventually. He shelters himself away from everybody... dropping no more than a few breadcrumbs as to who he might actually be. I need to know. I hate not knowing, and maybe it is perfection in knowing... my perfection. My perfection is peace and love with everything attached... I think I just figured out why that phrase always stuck with me.

"I want to talk to him, but I think he's hidden himself too well. He has to discover how to be visable again... since he hasn't in so long. I want to talk to him, but I don't know what to say anymore."

It's been almost four years since that was written and I now sit here and wonder how much progress I've made from that point.