Last of the old, first of the new.

Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day?

The basic premise of the movie is that the worst day of the main character's life occurs on Groundhog Day. Somehow, though, every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up the next morning and it's the same Groundhog Day. He is stuck in an infinite loop. Eventually he turns that worst day into the best day, and finally is free of the loop and has a new outlook on life.

For a long time now I've been really down. My spiritual life has been the pits, I wasn't happy about the future, I was not content with pretty much everything in my life. I couldn't tell what was wrong with me. It was like I wasn't directing my own life anymore. The thoughts going through my head all the time, some of the things I said or did...it's been a hard time.

I really think I've just been depressed. The Groundhog Day idea is really appealing as it relates to the past four years. Do it all over again, and do it RIGHT this time. I don't want to move, to change, to go away. I would rather just fade away...like dust in the wind.

I'm not really sure if it's over but I feel better. I've been accepted to grad school where I've been going to college for the past four years and things are looking up. My future might be in counseling after all...so long as I really get this graduate degree.

I feel as though I am the last bastion of the old STM crowd and the first of the new. I've actually thought that for a long time. See, I was here when Creed was in its final years...and then I was here to see the new group arise. I disappeared here and there, it's true, but something's changed. Something's different. Ask anyone who has been here as long as I have...it's an entirely different flavor. Not good or bad, just different.

The last of the old. It feels like forever ago...a faded memory, that I came here to college, friendless, hopeless, and with little virtue. I remember what it was like coming here. I cried after a week because I felt so alone. That first year was a fluke. A total fluke that I ended up hanging around Creed...simply because someone invited me that I randomly met over the summer and I felt too guilty not to go...

The first of the new. I had disappeared and intended not to return...and then, I had no choice because there was nothing left for me. But it was too late to get back the time I had lost. I made the last year and a half the best of what it could be. But there will be no second chance, no Groundhog Day of repeating circumstance. It is what it is.

But now, I do have another chance. I have come back, at the turn of the tide. There is a bright tomorrow, new faces, lit for Christ. And I will be there to gain back the time I lost.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that is the first and the last.