Okay, here's where the blog gets personal. Let's hash into the La Vida dramatics that have been the last six months of my life. La Vida is an outdoor education department at Gordon, and the La Vida trip is a twelve day backpacking trip through the Adirondacks. You can do that, or you can do an on-campus six week ropes course class twice a week if you are less excited about trekking for two weeks through the mountains. I chose discovery.
After doing discovery, I was so encouraged about myself and my abilities and made great friends and thought that I had found a niche, that I had discovered myself or something. And then I heard about a semester-long program that was all hiking and rock climbing and outdoor sport and I thought wow, that's intense. That's something to be proud of. And that's what I wanted the most, something I could tell people about and be really proud of. A risk that I had hit in the face with accomplishment.
So I went to meetings, applied, interviewed, and was accepted into the program. Now, I wasn't completely naive. I had been told by many people that I didn't know what I was getting myself into, that I was going to have to be on a really strict training schedule, that this was going to be hard. That's what bothered me, that people who knew so little about the program kept telling me it was going to be hard, in a way that would suggest that I thought it was going to be a skip through the woods. Lots of people, I'd even say most people, didn't think I would be able to do it.
It really got to me after a while, the constant looks like I was crazy and people obviously thinking I have no business being on that trip. I know I was inexperienced, but shoot, give me a chance. So then I got signed up to do La Vida as a test run.
So I did it. I hated it, but I did it. And I had no intention of pulling out of the WILD semester, I was going to prove everyone wrong, even if I had to be miserable for the whole semester. I just so desperately wanted to be different, to be strong and proud of this. But this is the less-talked about part of the story, I got sick on La Vida. We thought it was a gluten thing, but whatever it was, it was enough to get me hiked out to sit at base camp for four days. I cried the whole way to camp, I have never felt like such a failure than that moment. I was weak and I didn't succeed.
So I stayed at base camp for four days, and every time the director looked at me, he had this look of disappointment that I couldn't have imagined. It was clear, he thought I was being a princess. I don't really blame him, but it was so frustrating because it was out of my hands.
Anywho I was hiked back in after four days at base camp, and spent two days on solo, where we all had separate campsites which consisted of a tarp tied between a few trees to block rain, and a sleeping bag on the ground beneath the tarp. For two days I laid on my sleeping bag staring at the tarp thinking of how much of a failure La Vida was and how much I had let my team down and myself down. I gave up. After the two days of solo, we all went back to base camp for one more night. The next morning, La Vida ended with an 8.6 mile run that all of the participants did. I came in last.
After the run, the director of the program pulled me aside and asked me how it was. I lied and said that it was fine, hard but good and that I was excited for the WILD semester. He told me he didn't think that it would be a good idea if I did the WILD semester because of my gluten allergy and that he wasn't sure it was a good fit for me, and he was just speaking really politically and basically avoiding what he really wanted to say, so I asked him. "Do you think that I can't do it?" And he just looked at me, and shook his head and said he was sorry.
Now, it's one thing to have a friend not believe in you, it's another when the man who designed the program says you're not capable. I cried. So, last minute, I had to register for classes for fall semester and find housing and figure out what the heck had just happened.
I'm still ashamed of my performance on La Vida, that I couldn't be better, stronger. I had everything planned out, and it kind of all blew up.
And now I'm here, fall semester taking terrible classes and not doing much with my life. It's boring. I've been trying to figure out why this happened, why God wanted me here this semester disappointed instead of succeeding on the WILD semester. I don't care what anyone says, I could have done the WILD semester and I could have been really good on that trip.
So anywho, that's where I'm at right now. Frustrated and bitter.
But, like all things, I'll get over it.
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