19:17
That’s the current display of my atomic alarm clock next to my bed. That means that for approximately the last 45 minutes, I have sat in my chair switching between Gmail, Google+, Facebook, and Skype, but posting nothing. Why? The temptation is to say that I’m just bored, but I know that is not true. I could be watching a movie, writing the incident reports that are due next week, or walking outside, but I am not. I think the problem is that I am lonely.
By lonely I do not mean sensing a need to be near other humans–the other students are all great people, and I could probably walk down to the computer room and find a few of them. It’s more than that–it’s more of an awareness of a need to talk to one of the people that I feel truly know and understand me. Some of those people I worked with at Camp Wakonda. Others I lived with this past year. All of them were people I could go to when I was having a hard time, and just talk with. Talking with them always seemed to help me get a grip on my thoughts, and made whatever I was dealing with a little easier.
But for some reason right now none of them are online, so instead of talking I am writing, blogging, trying to arrange and understand my thoughts by hitting little keys with my fingers and putting letters on a white background. Sometimes it seems to be working, and other times it seems laughably futile. Still, I type, because I must do something.
So what is is making me feel this way? Why do I feel the need to talk to someone I really connect with? I don’t know. I know things that probably affect it–a recent break-up, moving away from Union and a community of people my age who believe similarly to me, my first summer since 2004 not working at Camp Wakonda–but I don’t think any of them are completely responsible for it.
It’s times like these that I am glad that I am never without the ability to talk directly to God, and that He always understands how I feel. So I pray, write, blog, and try to sort and make sense of my thoughts–and trust that God will help me make sense of the ones I cannot understand, when the time is right.