loneliness

A week ago I was asked what I had learned this past year. I lied somewhat. I said that I had learned that there is a difference between what you need to exist and what you need to live. This distinguished between being a body and "being" a person. And in many ways I am learning that, but that isn't something I learned at school.
When I originally thought back to what this year taught me, it was that I can survive on my own. I learned that it is possible for me to create a place where I felt loved, excepted and needed. This summer that lesson is being turned on it's head.
In church today I was reflecting on everything I currently miss - my family, my friends, feeling loved, feeling special, etc - and I realized that this summer maybe my lesson is the exact opposite. I feel as if all I learned was nonsense, that it is impossible to create a community where I can belong and that without that community I am nothing. And I'm not sure how to live with this lesson. Because as much as I try, as often as I go out with people, I am not finding a home in this place.
Why is it so difficult to find community in the place I was born, the place I spent the last 9 years of my life, the place where my family has roots? Why is it so difficult here when it was so easy in the fall, in a place I had no roots, no connections, and no history? The logic here is that I connect better with strangers than with old friends, but I disagree. I love being loved for who I am and not the face I show, and that kind of love can only be given by true friends.
And so, what I guess I'm trying so say, is that I am lonely. And dealing with questions as to how, and as to why. And praying constantly to feel loved and to find a community that can I can love for the next 3 months. IF GOD WILLS IT TO BE SO.

Comments

  1. MegMay 31, 2010 at 10:19 AM

    oh beks, i miss you. you are loved here, no matter what. but i pray that you will find a home there too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CrystalJune 2, 2010 at 11:23 AM

    I'm lonely too...And about leaving a place and coming back I totally understand because to me, it still feels weird and I'm afraid to return where I was before. I guess you could say that with somewhere you've never been you don't know what it is like so your expectations are completely fantasy and with somewhere you have been your expectations are based on previous experience and you expect to feel at home and don't realize until you get there that life has gone on without you. I love you! And I hope that you can feel like you belong again too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoshuaJune 2, 2010 at 2:31 PM

    "Why is it so difficult here when it was so easy in the fall, in a place I had no roots, no connections, and no history?"

    perhaps a bit of the contrast between

    - being in a community as a student and having everyone be there for a unifying reason vs. living a life outside of that unifying cause where all you have is your time and what you do with it. Where people, activities, and places have permanency, history, long term reality.

    is working its way into your feelings...
    p.s. love you

    ReplyDelete

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