Post College Musings

I wrote this to myself right as I was graduating college. How interesting to see yourself in your early 20s speak to their future, with optimism unearned and yet earnest.

Reading back through all of this material, through the thoughts I’ve had throughout high school and throughout college, now that I’m standing on the cusp of graduating college, and long removed from many of the sentiments that have dotted my mind over the past 7 or 8 years, I can see how much pain I was in and how lost I was. While speaking truth about love and how that looks (thanks be to God for those insights and for placing me on that path of truth, for it has defined my life and kept me from falling into the void that surrounded me), I could not see how I did not love myself. I fooled myself into thinking that, if I loved enough and if I gave enough of myself away, I could erase the need to love myself. I’m not sure how conscious this even was, because the knowledge of how much disdain I held for myself didn’t surface until I learned what joy truly was. My body had turned off the capacity for feelings for so long that, when I first felt what joy really was, I almost went into shock. It broke me down, because it was like regaining a sense I didn’t even know I had lost. The real emotions that flooded me couldn’t be stopped, and I didn’t know how to handle all of these coming in all at once, but while this was hard, it was truly one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me. I felt like a complete person, and because of this catalyst, I was able to figure out so many of the issues that had surrounded me, chiefly being that fact that I didn’t like myself. This revelation hit me like a tsunami, because when I was able to look at myself and say that I actually liked the way I looked, my brain hit me with the massive realization that I had never actually said that about myself, that the thought that I enjoyed how I looked was completely foreign to me. It shook me to my core once again, and from this knowledge, I have now built myself up to be someone who cares much more deeply and much more genuinely, for I have learned that to love truly means that you have to have true love to draw from, and that starts from within, from realizing what God has given you and embracing it. I think the concept of love was lit as a fire within me in high school in order to keep me from completely turning away from Him and from plunging myself into a darkness that I could not escape. This notion of love, though I could not understand it fully when I came to see its importance, is what kept me on the path pointed to Him. I knew it carried great significance, and because of my natural academic slant toward life, I began to zealously investigate what love truly meant, how love was seen by those who had come before me. I did a lot of this research, I spent tens of hours of my sparse free time simply pouring myself into quotes and ideas and notions of how love looked. I started with Christian views and then moved to other views, hoping to gain a well-rounded grasp on the subject. And I learned a lot, but it took me a while to realize that all of these people could speak intelligently on love because they had experienced it, not through reading and research, but by living a life filled with love. It was hard for me to get that because I could not ever embrace the love that lived inside me, the love God held for me and the love I needed to hold for myself. At this current point, I now see how my intellectual pursuit laid a foundation for me to understand what love was when it eventually came rushing into my life, like a dam broken down and releasing a torrent of waters, so love crashed into me once I destroyed the logjam that was my hatred of myself and the lack of experienced emotions. I am now in a great position where I understand love as a concept as well as feel and experience it, and those two ways of knowing love have utterly changed me as a human being. I don’t know how much I ever rejected God, I know in middle school I held such great disdain for Him and refused to believe that such a God could exist who would love me and yet punish me so greatly. I know in high school I believed even though I found it hard to believe so many times. I know in college I struggled with faith when I saw hypocrisy all around me. But God refused to let me go, He refused to let me slip into those negative thoughts and emotions. And because I never truly was lost, now that I have found my way into His light, I can see how absolutely blessed I have been, and how much I have truly grown. This is the point of this writing, so that when you look back at this 7 or 8 years from now (old man), know that you have accomplished so much. I don’t know where you are at this point, I don’t know if you are with someone or not, maybe you’re married, maybe you even have kids. Maybe you’re still single and still living the life that God has placed in front of you. Wherever you are, know this: you’ve never been lost, and you will never be lost, not for long anyway. He’s gonna bring you right back into things, just wait and see. I hope you are as happy as I am now, still living in the joy that is so new to me still. As of the time of this writing, your father has been gone for just under 3 weeks, and that’s hard right now, but I know you’ll get to a good place with it again soon. Keep your head up, wherever you are in life, and know that He loves you so, so much. Keep loving yourself too, never lose that.