Hey, how about that mondo snow storm, the blizzard of 2010? Some scary stuff, right? Silly meteorologists.

I know you’ve shut down and checked out for the semester, and I don’t know what more I can say to try to motivate you. It’s been hard. It’s been a hard year, but remember what Kimberly said about transitions? She said for her it’s taken her at least a year to adjust to new parts of her life. As your year closes, it may have just come to its worst point before things start looking up. You’ve realized some really important things about relationships, things you innately understood as an  impressionable youth with a malleable soul. You can be just as confident and trusting of your friends and family as you were then. Yes, you’re a different person now, so of course you play a different role; you meet different needs, but you also need to acknowledge that you have different needs now, too. I know you like to think of yourself as the constant one, always there, always checking up, providing support, but not everybody needs that from you. You’re slowly accepting this, and it’s a big step. Adjustment is hardly ever easy, especially as we get older. Plus, let’s just be realistic: you’re thousands of miles away from your familiar worlds. Things naturally change when you’re not there, that’s the simple truth. You spent eight years in Jacksonville (Middleburg) and over six and a half years in New York. Those are major chunks of your life and you know better now not to expect a transition less rough than what you’ve faced. You miss both places immensely, and you’re finally starting to warm up to your hometown again. I don’t want you to resent NYC the way you did Jacksonville. I know what you’re thinking, or what you’re starting to think: you don’t ever want to go back. Stop being angry. Just: stop. You’ve forged a new path in your life, and your friends and family are moving on without you. That’s what people do: they do what they can to be happy. They don’t depend on you and you can’t depend on them for happiness. Yes, you all love each other, but you’re not each other’s sole reason for existing. Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but you don’t need to keep disappointing people or unduly pushing them away. May, just believe in the love. That is always going to be there, no matter if everything else changes. You’ve always valued and nurtured your relationships and now it’s time to take better care of yourself. So, start believing in yourself, too.