Half a year ago, my entire life changed in the split of a second. Almost every part of myself as I knew it went away and fell apart. I got depressed, really depressed, and at times woke up at night close to 4 a.m., shaking with terrible panic attacks. I lost friends. Almost all of my relationships changed. I questioned everything: who I was, my belief in a benevolent God, and whether I could still be a good person, a good friend, and a positive contribution to society, and a beloved child of God after I'd hurt people so badly.

No, I don't want to talk about what happened, and most likely never will except to the people I love. Instead, I want to talk about picking up the pieces and getting my life back together. No, there was no getting over it. No, it wasn't easy. No, the task isn't even complete. It might never be.

But now, in reflection, I learned more outside the classroom through having my experience than anything I learned in a classroom.

I learned that everything is complicated, absolutely everything. I learned that you have to withhold judgment and trust your gut about people until you have all the details. I learned that life goes on. It always does, but that isn't always a good thing, and at times, for me, it really wasn't. But at that moment, I also learned that God is good, even if life isn't. I learned that life is inherently confusing. Everyone is telling the truth, even if those truths are in direct conflict with each other.

I learned that life doesn't get easier. You get stronger, and life just gets different. I learned, in the words of William Faulkner, that the past doesn't go away. It's not even past. I learned that there isn't always a resolution to problems, and even though it hurts, you have to be okay with that.

I learned, after all, that life will never be the same. It never can, but that's not always a bad thing. There's a whole world out there ready to be explored. I learned, in an extreme way, that it doesn't matter what other people think about you. It matters what you think and what God thinks. I learned that sometimes you just have to stop and let yourself feel the pain and grief instead of pushing it away, because that's the only way you can go through life without people seeing that you're only a shred of a person lost and not all there. Sometimes, you just have to stop and know this: you're doing the absolute best you can. You're acting according to God's plan, and there's a bigger picture for all this.

I learned that picking up the pieces means accepting that life is sometimes good, sometimes bad, and at its worse, really ugly. I learned that picking up the pieces means that the story is never over. Yes, a traumatic moment or death re-organizes and re-charts your life entirely. Your plans are destroyed, but the beauty of life is that it won't go according to your plans. I learned that grief comes at life's most unexpected moments, and that even if that's embarassing, it happens that way for a reason.

I learned that life cannot go on if you sit in your room all day and cower in shame, unable to let yourself confront your demons. I learned that picking up the pieces means treating people with respect, like you would want to be treated, and saying hi and smiling even if they won't return that grace. I learned that life is about never giving up on people, even if your relationship with them is not the same and destroyed. I learned that life is an amalgamation of "so whats," a combination of accepting the notion that "so what this happened. What now?" to live in the moment.

But above all, I learned that picking up the pieces means owning your story. Every single part of it couldn't have happened to anyone else. But yours can help other people as long as you let it. I learned that the only reason you feel this much pain and love is that you loved something and loved people so much in the first place, and it's important not to lose sight of that love.

I learned, perhaps most importantly, that it's more important to be kind than right. Even if you're right, it's important to not get stuck in the pain. It's important to not defend yourself and stand down and surrender to the people that want you to suffer and rip you to shreds. What can they do to someone who already died over and over again, who can withstand anything through the grace of God?

Six months later, I'm eternally grateful. I'm more alive than I've ever been. I know what it is now to not need to control my life. I learned what it means to surrender. I learned how the strongest people still standing are the ones that are limping, barely holding themselves together, and those are the people that walk with peace and wisdom. Yes, I identify as one of these people, and by the grace of God, I know what it means now to trust and feel joy. For all this, I am the luckiest person in the world, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.