Thank You

It is a story I like to tell a lot, so you have probably heard it before:
An 18 year old girl sat in the back of her uncle's car panicking a few months before her 19th birthday. All of her life's possessions were crammed into the little trailer at the back of her uncle's car. "I can't do this!" She declared over and over and over again. "Maybe we should just turn around. I'm going to fail. I'm never going to make friends. You know, I bet I never even got accepted, it has all been a mistake and I'm going to get there and they aren't even going to have my name listed." Finally her uncle invented a complicated car game for them all to play to distract her, or to shut her up.

4 years later and here I am still as scared as ever but with four years worth of beautiful moments.

I loved university.
I loved meeting people who care about books as much as me.
I loved learning how to really read a text closely and understand it.
I loved learning how language works to create meaning.
I loved exploring ideas.
I loved learning the history of my country.
I loved hearing different opinions and reading the stories of a variety of people.
I loved learning how to communicate more clearly.

But more than all of this it was the people I met that changed my life.

Four years ago I left behind the only home I had ever known, but it didn't even feel like a home.
My father had passed away three years before that and I truly felt like my family had crumbled.
In the years since then I have learned to appreciate my family for who they are but at the time I felt very alone.
I had been out of high school for a year before I came to university. High school had been hard for me. I was an easily stressed, overly inquisitive, kid with bad fashion sense who had never heard the music of my peers or seen the movies of my generation. I was awkward and scared of social interaction yet still unbelievably bold. It took people a long time to get used to me. The first thing they noticed was that I wasn't like them. It took time for them to realise that I wasn't like anyone. When they figured that out I started to get some respect, but it took time. I learned patience. Even though I found a lot of solace in the drama club I never truly felt like I belonged. I made friends but we never really hung out. I spent most of my time with my family and half way through high school all of that shattered when my dad died and my older sister moved out for university. I still had my youth group but it didn't take long for them to get tired of my questions and by the time I came to university I was left with very little community to hold onto. I was afraid and cautious. I had low expectations for the next four years. I didn't believe that I could ever belong anywhere. I was convinced that everyone would leave me eventually.

I don't really know how it happened.
It is funny how many people can be loved by someone who doesn't even believe that humans are capable of selflessness.
Don't get me wrong, there has been anger and grief. There have been people who entered only to leave. (It wasn't always there fault sometimes it was just due to temporary circumstances.)There have been people who didn't understand or didn't care. There has definitely been hurt, but there has also been something else: belonging for the first time.

From bible studies, to camp, to classes, to French immersion, to friendships that grew outside the bounds of categories.

My new friendships have taken me to poetic coffee shops, on crazy long bus rides, on hikes out in the woods, and into people's homes.

I don't even have the words to express how much all the people I have met over the last four years have meant to me or how special the moments have been. All I can say is that I know when I have forgotten what a false dichotomy is and how to conduct a close reading I will still remember the summer of blueberries, planking on the bus, barefoot pasta potlucks, afternoon campouts in the forest, river walking adventures, 4 hour coffee time, poetic non verbal communication, sunsets over the St. Lawrence river, long dinner conversations, and ever single person who entered my heart.
Thank you.