A Tribute to Beginnings and Endings

This year so far, I know it's only been 4 months, but so far it has been a year of beginnings and endings. I feel like I have begun and ended so many things in the first few months of 2016. I feel like both beginning things and ending things in the past 4 months have been super hard. Harder than I could have imagined... But here are a few things I've learned with the change in beginning something and the change in ending something.

Beginning...

Let's start with the change of beginning something new. I began the year with going back to school, something I hadn't been able to do in 3 years because of my mission and then being so sick after. I was so excited to begin, that I didn't have time to think about being anxious, I tried to plan and prepare for the anxieties and stress that comes when one starts college, but I couldn't brace myself. i was to excited to finally move on with my life.

In beginning schooling I relearned how to socialize again. That explaining the problem with the CDC and their ignorance towards Lyme, is not the best way to start off a conversation with the cute boy in your Monday morning class. I learned that there is a cultural sensitivity to certain words and symptoms when those certain words or symptoms are passed around. I did know this, but I hadn't experienced the cultural ignorance that came when I threw out words like "depression" "anxiety" or "bipolar disorder"... I re-learned just how much I can't stand ignorance, but also, and probably more importantly, people are even more likely to be ignorant, when you point out to them just how ignorant they are being.

I also learned some stuff about beginning new friendships, and other relationships. I learned that there is a time and a place for sharing trials and struggles. I learned to never question if someone else ever struggles, that just because they don't carry it on the outside, doesn't mean it isn't there, and that they are probably way better actors than me at hiding it from everyone else. I learned a better way to appreciate where I am at, and how to savor who I'm with... But those 2 things I didn't learn until things started ending.

Ending...

It's funny how when things end we can look back and see just how scared we were to begin and then see the change that took place in the end and laugh about it. My first semester just ended. In that time I was able to make friends, revisit my passion for playing basketball, obtain good enough grades to pass my math class, declare a major, and many more things! But when a semester ends, I'm finding that many things end with it. Most are not pleasant. I think I'm finding I like beginnings better than endings. I can always envision a beginning, I can see it, or parts of it, and picture myself there, and it makes all the more easier. But an end, I don't always see, and so when it comes, I'm never prepared, and something about an ending always catches me off guard... ending my mission for example... 6 months early, did NOT see that one coming for sure.


But there are other things that I've learned as things have ended. One is that I will never take a relationship, friendship, acquaintanceship, or any other social connection for granted ever again. People come and people go, and that is the nature of life, but people come and people stay too, it's a matter of their choice as much as it is yours... and that isn't always the easiest thing to understand, but it is true. But I have so many good people in my life, and I am so blessed to have those people there, that if others choose to come and go, that is just as much life, as the others who stay.

Another thing I have learned is that with the others that come and go, it's ok to be sad when they go. It's ok to grieve. I have stood on my soap box of "grieving" before (click here to read it), but sometimes a girl needs to go back and read her old blog posts, because I had forgotten that. I had forgotten the need to be sad before I could move on with my life after being sent home and then diagnosed. I forgot that, and I forgot how hard it is to move on when you are forcing yourself to be happy, and pretend like nothing hurts, when in reality you need to allow that time to be sad to learn from your sadness so that you can then be happy and move on. That is when the healing begins... And I had forgotten that. And I am just now having a refresher on all of that.

Whether life is beginning or ending, or a part of life is ending and another one is beginning, there are ups and downs in all of them. Some hard and sad, some fun and some exhilarating. All bringing about change, which is truly inevitable in this life...

But one thing that I have learned, and a lot of it is because of Lyme Disease, but we can't compare ourselves because we deal with our own change differently than someone else. Everyone changes and goes through changes, and reacts to changes differently, and we can't compare ourselves, or judge others because of how we go through them. It's not fair to others, and it's definitely not fair to ourselves, and it doesn't make the change any easier too.

So heres to lives never ending beginnings and endings! For just like winter ends and spring begins, summer also ends as fall begins.

-The Lyme Warrior