My mom and I were talking on the way back from Sioux City today, and the topic of a lost love came up. Let me tell you what I can remember--and what my mother reminded me.
It all started when I was young. I lost this love when I was only 11.
I was your average nerdy 5th grader. I was taking two classes at the middle school, doing some light teaching/tutoring, and still doing 3 weeks of work in my 5th grade classes in an afternoon.
For some reason, my school thought I wasn't being challenged enough, and that I should skip 6th grade. As some of you may know already, I skipped.
I was already going to be going to a new school, but now I was also away from the friends I had grown up with. Add to that the new glasses--my eyes finally went bad enough that same summer--and you get an outcast. I went from having tons of friends to almost none. As you might imagine, that made me stop loving school--I never lost my love of learning, but I started to hate school. I stopped trying. I went from all A's to a C average almost overnight--with anything higher than a B being rare.
It was also around this time that I started getting depressed. I know I had started having suicidal thoughts by 8th grade--at the latest--and they've never fully gone away.
Even just thinking about the turn my life took then makes me want to cry. But at the same time, if things had gone differently, I probably never would have met the people I've met here in Ames, and quite possibly have never become a Christian. Looking back, it's a good trade-off, but at the time, if I could have changed it, I would have done so.
No comments:
Post a Comment