There is nothing quite like the culture shock of returning to college after your first winter break. Everything feels so disconnected and it's as if you're meeting your friends again for the first time. While many of us pray that the breath of renewal will bring freshness and vitality to past circumstances, things mostly stay the same. People do what they have always done and life carries on in the same fashion as it had before. I feel like I've been shaken from a dream to then realize I haven't escaped the lucid realm. The past is bittersweet with trips to downtown and ice cream runs at ungodly hours. I squirm at the feelings these memories resurrect and thus the seed of hope is planted like dandelions whose flowery abundance hide the weeded thicket below. I understood that things wouldn't change, yet my prayers didn't. They pleaded for evolution to correct its mistake of creating such highly complex and emotional human beings. I would lay in bed at times wondering when others would be shaken from their slumbers to be who they used to; to return to their roles as friends and makers of my happiness. It is these times when I seek the warmth of a thousand suns to banish the depths of my denial. And with God’s grace, it happened.

My eyes were opened by life’s frosty truth – an unavoidable, cold, and swallowing truth. I found that people didn’t change and their ugliness would never metamorphose into the beauty I felt was there. It couldn’t be that I was meant to have this stress on my life. However, nothing ever happens without reason. I quickly remembered that in order for light to exist, darkness must too. It is such a confusing experience to live on my own after being uprooted from the comfort of home and everything I had known. Yet, returning from what felt like months of a winter break proved to be even stranger. Confident friends told me “this winter break will be good for everyone” – something we were in desperate need of. The rottenness of old would be washed away and forced down the drains into where? I never found the nods of agreement from those around the lunch table too convincing. I just wanted my bed and the chance to shower without flip flops. To eat and be aware of each ingredient. To hug my family and see my best friends who eagerly awaited my return. The break was full of joy and the radiance of my childhood home, but the days stretched on and I felt myself missing my college life.

I couldn’t wait to return to campus and my eagerness became increasingly stronger after the holidays. All of this excitement was valid and I didn’t seem to mind the fact that there would be the same people leaving not-so-nice reminders of how much they disliked me on my whiteboard. Then, I actually stepped foot back on campus for the first in four weeks. My stomach churned and my lips quivered with the possibility of running into them again. They are the kids from down the block who threw stones. The same ones who make childhood a place we never want to return. I found myself so gullible to believe in the sort-of Disney magic which would turn wolves into sheep. I felt like the kid who rushed to be older, forgetting I’d be without my fort of blankets to protect me. I was left defenseless against a hoard of locusts who ate away at my strength and courage to be myself.

This season proved to be one of challenge and hardships, of progress and focusing on what I could do to improve my outlook on these negative experiences. I saw people who I wanted to hide from, heard others whose words could cut, and was given strength by those who greeted me with the warmth of a thousand suns.