Loss

A lot of things happened prior to this semester. They all affected me greatly. In addition to leveling with the transition of living in a new place and adjusting to college life, I've had to come to terms with these events and figure out how I plan on dealing with them.

At the end of my senior year, I broke up with my boyfriend of two years. Maybe that doesn't sound like a very long time, but he was a huge part of my life and the vacancy that was left when he was out of the picture was immense. The independence is liberating and is what I need to grow as a person, but this was an ordeal to deal with and still is from time to time. It weakened me.

Very shortly after this, a lifelong friend of mine passed away. He committed suicide. I had known him since kindergarten, and he passed within a stone's throw from graduation. This was incredibly hard to deal with and still is. After this event, my friend group became stronger. We were there for each other. This taught us that we need to appreciate each other every single day.

Too shortly after this and within a week of graduation, another friend of mine that I had known for a very long time passed. He was very close to my other friend that passed immediately before him.
He fell off of a cliff.

No one knew how to deal with this. These abnormal events became the focus of the last semester of senior year. One funeral was the morning of prom. The other was the morning of my college orientation. Nothing made sense to me. Our group of friends was like a village trying to stay above ground, repercussion after repercussion pulling us under. Devastation.

I tried to stay close from my friends. Everything got harder. I eventually separated myself from them almost completely. This may have been selfish of me, but it was the only thing I could do to maintain some amount of sanity. Nothing made sense and there was too much sadness. I watched my childhood friends fall apart. What little hope many of them had for the future has been hindered by the alcohol and drug use that they turned to to cope. I love these people and always will. But I refuse to let their influence on each other influence myself. None of them are going to college. Few of them have jobs.

If it's selfish I'm sorry. I want to be there for them. I want to be strong for my friends and I don't know how many times I told worried counselors and teachers that we would be okay and that we were looking out for each other. I just couldn't do it anymore.

Everything changed so quickly. Within the course of a few months, I separated from someone I assumed I would spend my life with, two friends passed, I graduated, moved away from home to a new town and was thrown into this entirely uncomfortable situation of knowing no one and having to start over.
Things are getting easier, little by little. It's a slow process and I don't expect to be completely okay anytime soon. These past few months have been a whirlwind and I am still finding my way out.
Loss of home, loss of friends, loss of comfort, and loss of a relationship.

As a result, I'm not really sure who I am anymore.