hi senior year, it's me.

Hi.

I'm home. It's been forever. Maybe like a summer too long forever. There have been many things floating around my small not-so compact noggin' but for whatever reason, I've not been able to write. Perhaps it was the busyness. Or the fact that I spent 2/3 of my summer prepping and then spending three weeks breathing, laughing, living life, and falling deeply in love with a beautiful culture and beautiful people. Or perhaps it was just me trying to soak in the tiny moments that make up our already hectic lives and stop the documenting and just live for once. Who knows.

I have so much I want to say. And this will mostly be for myself. The truth is, I've been thinking it might be time to shelve this space for good. Things are changing. Doesn't mean I'll stop writing, but it might be time to make the move soon. 

We'll see I suppose, but for now, this'll do. Cheers to those starting school again. 

Much love,

A

"She has depression", my aunt said and then stopped when she saw the look on my face and realized I hadn't known.

The weeks after, I lay in my bed at night and wondered where exactly my life was headed as I traced its trajectory in my mind. I thought back to my own life and its strange oddities, how I never understood depression and scoffed at people who had been diagnosed. How I had always believed people who suffered from this illness were simply ungrateful and could not count their blessings. How hearing the words "I have depression" didn't faze me.

But everything changed when I walked through depression my junior year of high school and then once more again last year. I never did do a junior year recap. You may or may not have noticed there was no "well goodbye, junior year" even though I've done a recap for all the school years so far. The reason being I was walking through a low point in my life and could not find the right words to say.  I thought about the kind of strength it took for me to drag myself out of bed to see faces and to learn how to smile convincingly and say I was doing great when people asked. I thought about how much I had desperately tried to claw out of my own skin, wishing to be somebody I wasn't just so I didn't have to go through another wretched day.

Let's rewind a little.

A week before my junior year started, a few of my closest friends piled into a car at four o'clock in the morning to catch the sunrise over the Atlantic. The sky was tinted in a soft array of pastels when we arrived and over the next half hour, we watched with bated breath as the sun rose steadily and cast its beams across the shore.

As beautiful as that morning was, I don't recall that day as a particularly fond memory. The thought of stepping back into the academic year was daunting. Not to mention, at the beginning of the summer, I had asked the Father to do whatever it would take for Him to make Himself so undeniably real to me and He had happily delivered. (Word to the weary: If you ask God for something then expect Him to do it, just not in the way you expect.) Needless to say, I was sore from all the stretching and molding.

"Yo, chill. I think I'm good now." I said to Him.

He laughed and said, "If you think you've seen it all, you haven't seen nothing yet. Just wait and see."

Mentally gearing myself up for what was supposed to be my most challenging academic year was draining alone. Then I had to take into account balancing two part-times and finding a new church and fellowship to attend. On one hand there was immense excitement because everything felt so new. On the other hand, there was immense fear of inadequacy and failure.

It's a little silly looking back at it now because I honestly hadn't seen anything yet.

Never in a million years would I have imagined my junior year to be the way it had been. I don't know how to even begin. Let's just say, I don't believe in seeing the world through rose-colored lenses. Life isn't always pretty. Life gets gnarly and yucky and ugly. Sometimes, life really sucks.

Like, believe me, I think I told God that repeatedly throughout the year. To borrow a phrase from a friend, I spent many nights figuratively "punching" God and asking why's. I told Him emotions and feelings really sucked. I told Him school really sucked. I told Him friends who were supposed to friends but were not being friends really sucked. I told Him loving on family really sucked. I told Him reconciliation really sucked. I told Him I really sucked.

In those nine months, I fought, wrestled, debated, and negotiated with Him. I shouted, screamed, "punched", and lamented to Him. Sometimes, I ran and hid from Him. In those nine months, I often allowed the accuser to tell me of things I wasn't and ate the lies he fed me. In those nine months, I wondered how I would ever walk out of the season of life I found myself in because I didn't feel like it anymore. The prayer that I had said, asking God to make Himself real to me was becoming too much for me too handle.

As I painstakingly crawled through that season of life, I noticed another change. Suddenly hearing the words, "I have depression" come out of multiple loved ones began to break and crush me in a way I had never felt before. Sympathy became empathy. To understand the difference between the two, you have to picture sympathy as looking into the deep, dark hole that your friend is trapped in and saying, "Wow, it looks terrible down there, I'm sorry." But empathy takes the ladder and climbs down to be the shoulder they lean on and an extra hand to hold. Finally, I understood that when someone says they are depressed, it isn't just something that can be fixed with a bout of therapy, medication or a few soothing words. Most people spend their life fighting it day after day. My heart hurt because I realized and understood what it was like to be in those shoes. I could finally look these loved ones in the eye and say, "I know. I understand." even if it was only to a certain extent.

But even more importantly, I began to understand the Father's heart. Suffering allows us to understand the bigness of God. In full disclosure, I don't write "Suffering allows us to understand God's heart" because in some way, I think we can only fathom a fraction of His heart through the hardships we go through. Much of our suffering comes from the result of simply living in a broken world and interacting with broken people. Seeing the effects of such leaves me desperate for the complete healing that only He can and will bring.

Suffering allows us to understand the bigness of God in more ways than one. It's knowing, even if it's deep (deep) down inside, that He is bigger than what you're going through at the moment. He is bigger than your illness. He is bigger than the trials you face. He is bigger than the clouds that loom over your head, the face you have to put on, the struggle of being brutally honest at where you stand. And in my complete brokenness and suffering, I take great comfort in resting in His Sovereignty and the promise that He doesn't leave or abandon His own.

As I went through that particular season of my life, God was still not done with me. True to His loving character, He took the reins of my heart and begin unearthing all the ugly and brokenness that still resided in me. He swept clean every corner, convicting me of undetected pride and my conditional love. He opened my eyes to see the ongoing spiritual warfare at school and the kind of darkness that still gripped the campus. He challenged me to love deeper by placing individuals in my life that I thought were difficult. He allowed me to crumble to a breaking point so I would run back to Him. He taught me how to pray and ask Him for things in full faith. He brought people of all kinds into my life to love on me and encourage me. In those nine months, He brought me to my lowest lows but stayed nigh. In those nine months, He did not allow the accuser to touch me. In those nine months, even when I wanted to let go of Him, He wouldn't let go of me.

Fast forward nine months later, we blinked and just like that, my junior year was all over.

On May 11, after the very last day of school, a group of us kids piled into the cars while it was still dark out and headed off to the beach to catch the sun rise once more. So there I was at the end of another school year, standing on the very same beach I had started the year with watching the same old sun rise over the same old ocean. New faces. New me.

Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I recalled the girl who stood on the shore in August and wondered where she had gone. Whoever that girl was, so unsure of herself and where she was nine months ago seemed so far away.

I traced the three words into the sand because I felt that it encapsulated everything I had gone through:

A new season is here.

Goodbye, junior year. Thanks for the ride and the many lessons.

Hi senior year, it's me. Let's go.