On Being Enough and The Future to Come

I feel the need to share personal things today.  Very personal.  But, although they are sore spots, dampeners on my blustery autumn day, I will not let them get me down.  Because I have to believe that there is a road that leads past them, even if they affect the outcomes of the decisions I have yet to make.

Confession #1.  I am afraid.  I am afraid of growing up.  I want to be like Peter Pan and never, never, never grow up.  The world is so big, so new to me, and I don't know how it works.  I've never had more than $50 in my wallet, I've never owned a car or a house or been responsible for getting myself to class on time.  I've never lived on my own.  And as I was looking at a college application online today, I realised that it is finally happening.  I am Growing Up.

Confession #2.  I am afraid because I have made mistakes.  Many mistakes.  Harmful mistakes.  Since it's only you two reading this, I feel comfortable sharing, because I know the time will shortly come when it will become not just my problem, but a lot of people's problems.  So maybe if I start small, it will make things easier.  Frankly put, my GPA at the moment is a 2.8.  I am not in Honors World Cultures because I didn't get in.  My sophomore English teacher both hated and loved me; hated, because I was an awful student, barely scraping out a C.  Loved me, because I loved writing.  I've had an F for a quarter in at least every year of my high school career.  Usually math.  I have never really studied for a test before.  I screwed around my freshmen and sophomore years, even last year, and now I'm afraid that my awareness has come too late.  That I will not get into the colleges that I want to, that I will be forced to pay for all of my mistakes for the next few years until I can prove that I really have changed.  I've been ashamed of this for a long time.  My unweighted class rank is 276 or something equally as atrocious.  I did not even make the top 1/2.  Every day I can feel this crushing me, my eyes are watering because I've finally realized that I'm in a hole, a hole that I want to get out of, but it's too deep, there is too much wall for me to scale.  I'll never make it in time.  

Confession #3.  I didn't have a testimony until 2 years ago, at Girl's Camp.  I never shared it, never read my scriptures, never prayed or did anything to fix that.  I simply did not know how.  That's why Girl's Camp will always be so miraculous to me.  I've learned more in the past two years at Girl's Camp than I have learned in my whole life combined.  Even so, I can count the times that I have gotten up in testimony meeting on a Sunday and bore my testimony.  Zero.  I have never let the ward know that I know that this church is true.  Often times I still wonder, still worry that it isn't.  I have a long way to go.

Confession #4.  I've felt more love, both in my body and given to me, than I've been able to handle.  I'll never be the same.  Love truly does change people.  I finally know that I am in love, because there are people constantly in my mind that are a definite part of my future.  I'm shaping my dreams around them, not because I feel I have to, but because that is what I want to happen, that is where I want them to be.  I am in love, and it is all-consuming, anguished because I feel so undeserving.  I feel like by thinking it could happen, by daydreaming about what my life could be with the people I love in it, that everything will crash around me and they will disappear from my life.  Do they even know that I pray for them every night, that I will never be the same because I have known them?  I think about that now, more than ever.  Who will I become?  Will they stay with me, or simply remain in my head so that I can measure everyone else I meet to their shadow?

Confession #5.  I love you.  Don't forget that.