My favorite season may be summer, but my favorite time of year is now. It starts right around Halloween and concludes with New Years. I love the holidays; people gear up for festivities and they become a lil bit more aware of and gentle towards their fellow men. Mom decorates the place up, giving it a lil more homey feeling. Some people smile more, as their lives seem a bit more jazzed up. I am always sorry to see the green of trees and flowers fade and the warmth of summer give way to the chilly temperatures that carry a crispness in the air. But I welcome that fresh crispness and the changing colors can be quite pretty. My consolation for losing summer is the festive jollyness people get.
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For the first time it seems I know what one of my sisters is going through. Kami is having a hard time adjusting to college. Part of the problem I think, is that there are no real activities on campus. It's a small town, a small campus. The students--most of 'em--commute for the weekends to the surrounding towns where they live. It is so unlike Ricks or ISU, which have events and concerts going on all the time. Kami is a social creature. She just does not do well with nothing going on.

Lately she has been coming online in the evening and chatting, needing a connection to home. I really like it myself because I now have a medium in which I can talk freely with her. I guess I'm more relaxed on here than I am in person when talking to her. I guess it puts me in my element; but I think this new experience has changed her attitude and perhaps humbled her a bit. She's homesick and wants so badly to come home. But she has a contract with CEU till May that she's obligated to fulfill. Just like I was with The Bengal, ISU's paper my first year there. And as much as I have spoken of the misery I went through there, you may well remember it.

I felt much like Kami does now, though I kept myself going. I was in tears most every day, on the phone with Nan about one thing or another to do with the paper. I felt chained to it. We were told, expected, to be in the office if we weren't asleep, in class or at a part-time job or on assignment for zee flipping paper. I couldn't go home on weekends, even though my family was an hour and a half (in slow traffic) away. Once I'd had it. I hadn't been home in a month if I remember, and it was going to be a slow weekend. Come heck or high water, I was going home. I told my boss that week I was going; she wasn't totally happy with me, but I didn't care at that point. Nothing I had done or could do was right. I went home.

At one point I was ssoo tempted to quit after the first semester. I don't know how I did it, but I made it through my second semester of heck and it was with great relief when I left that office for good.

Kami can make it through this. She has to. Yes, it's hard and feels unbearable much of the time. Especially when depression is deep and it affects your immune system. She's struggling internally with conflicting desires as I once did. She wants to come home, but is afraid if she does, she won't wanna go back. She wants to quit school, but won't because she doesn't want the label of "quitter." Well, who does? All of us here feel for her, and as we talk I try to keep up a cheerful banter for her, hoping to lighten her cares and make her laugh. I know without Nan, Mom and Sandy that year I would have broken down into a mindless shell.

I am grateful for all the encouragement I've had and will get.
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To live a life through is not like crossing a field.
~Russian proverb~

..:: Remembered�����E�����Occuring ::..

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