love.

It has been a long time and a lot has happened. Also, a lot has stayed the same. I am working two jobs. One, for the company that I have been working for for the past three years--the mentally disabled home. I am located at a different home this summer, which was a bit difficult at first, but now I really enjoy it. I work with four clients--two girls and two boys (I should say two women and two men). They are very high functioning which is very different from the other home. My other job is for a company called DRCC, Duluth Regional Care Center. There, I work as an In Home Service Support Assistant--that is a mouthful. :) Presently, I work with a fourteen year old girl who has cerebral palsy, mild fetal alcohol syndrome, ADD, and is manic depressive. She is such a joy to work with most of the time. She is extremely high functioning and can really do everything herself. So, I work with her four days a week in her home for about 10 hours every day. You think she would get sick of me, but whenever I am about to leave she begs me to stay. There are plenty of days where I want to pull my hair out, but this job has made me grow in my flexibility and patience, which is a bit ironic because I was looking over my personal statement for the social work department this year and the two major things that I listed as things that I wanted to improve upon were flexibility and patience. HEY! I am working on them! :)
The other day, while I was driving my girl--that is what I call her because I am not allowed to say her name--back from a picnic she started talking about how this boy at the picnic asked her out. She got really red and giggly (like the typical girl would--I totally would too). I asked her what she said to him and she turned him down. Good because she is not allowed to date. Anyway, I then asked her what she thought it meant to have a boyfriend and she answered me with "love". I smiled and agreed. I then asked her what she thought love meant and she thought for a while and answered in a questioning tone "flirting". I smiled and said that flirting can have love, but love is much more than flirting. She thought a bit more and said "marriage". That one got me. I thought about it for a bit and told her that her answer is very true but you can have marriage without love and you can have love without marriage. My girl then sat there for a bit and asked me what love really was then. Holy crap. I thought a lot. A lot. I had no idea how to answer that. I had never been asked that question before, and in all honesty I thought I would have an answer--especially because I have been in love before. As I was driving back to her house I was trying to imagine a tangible object floating in the air that I could pick up and hand to her--love. But, no such luck. Then I tried to think about how I know when I am in love with someone and I could not come up with that answer either. It is so complicated. It's trust, comfort, commitment, understanding, compromise, etc. etc. etc. How do you explain such a thing. So, I told her to wait a couple of days and I would think of an answer. I also told her to ask her mother.

I am done with my work rambling. However, now on to other things.

Lately, I have been FREAKING out about Chicago. It is no longer this idea that may or may not happen. It is happening. I am going. I know I have known for a long time, but for some reason it is finally hitting me. My nerves are good nerves though. They are the same nerves I had before I left for college. They are the same nerves I had when I went into job interviews. But, it is frightening. I am growing up. Shit. It is fucking scary and enormously thrilling at the same time. Where did the time go? Where did my time at Dordt go? Am I really done with the school that I have called my home for the past three years?
Also, I have been so afraid of Thailand that I have put off much of my application/information forms. I have known that I am going for just as long as I have known about Chicago, but in my mind this is still a story from another book. Not my book. Not my story. But, I have had to ask myself if I want this to be my story. Do I want to travel the world? Do I want to help those around the world? Do I want to let fear rule my life? Yes. Yes. No. Okay, then I have to act on it. So, tonight after work I sat down and updated my resume and wrote my personal statement. I shuffled some money around and found my deposit money and am set to submit it all tomorrow. Wow.
There is more. And if you are still reading, I apologize. I am in the process of applying to graduate schools. My father printed off a crap load of information on about twenty different social work schools. Of course the University of Michigan is on the top of the list, but it is about $52,000. The University of Minnesota is almost as good and it is about $7,000. There are many other schools and I am looking into all of them, but yet again...commitment. Commitment scares the shit out of me. I do not know when that happened, but it is definite. All forms...jobs, trips, planning my life, marriage, all of it.

Well, overall, after all the rambling, it feels good to get it all out. I am excited but scared shitless. Please, dear reader, pray for me and for strength through this long journey called life.