“Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can!” Maude, Harold and Maude

I didn’t really want to go to college. Though I was in moments excited, I was more often anxious and cranky about it. I didn’t feel ready. I remember saying this with clarity to my folks. I had settled on University of Illinois in Champaign because it was where my sister had gone – I had visited her at school and spent some time on campus, so I could imagine myself in that place. But I wasn’t certain about my major in music education – I had a pretty voice, but smallish, and it hadn’t matured yet, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to teach, let alone conduct a choir. I’d been in choirs all my life, so I knew what that was like – but though I loved being a chorister, I didn’t feel at all excited about directing. Music generally made me happy, and I was good enough at it that it could get me into college, so I went with it – but I sort of knew going in that I was winging it. My parents, though, said they believed in me and that I could do this hard thing, that I belonged at college.

My mom had encouraged me, as a senior in high school, to look at other institutions, and I had a bit. I was mostly drawn to smaller, four-year schools, but didn’t think we could manage the cost. I had watched my closest high school friends graduate the year prior, going to various schools across the country, so it was like I’d had an extra year to contemplate this transition. But my friends were also calling me at odd hours of the night, often drunk and homesick, so it wasn’t like college seemed like this magical place – or at least not magically good.

My old high school beau and I had broken it off when he’d left for college at U of I, and this was devastating to me. Then we patched things up occasionally over the course of his first year, and again over the summer. Since I would be following him to school in the fall, I began to think toward the end of summer that things were starting to look up – like maybe, if I followed closely in my sister’s footsteps and stayed in my boyfriend’s shadow, I could maybe do this college thing. Maybe you can guess what happened next.

The thing is, I wasn’t wrong to be anxious. I could sense that big change was coming. Though I couldn’t quite imagine it, I knew life would be different on the other side – and given that I had just finally gotten things, by the latter part of my high school career, sort of the way I wanted them, I resented that time was moving on and really forcing me, one way or another, to take new steps.

So, yeah, I got to college, and within a couple of weeks, my boyfriend broke up with me. I was a mess. I decided to rush, and while I’m sure many folks have had a very positive experience in Greek life, I can say with clarity now that I was not a good fit for it. I wish someone had sat me down and said, really? This is what you want? I was looking for instant family, and this was what was promised, and I did meet some wonderful people – but mostly, relationships at the sorority house were about an inch deep, especially during pledge year – not at all what I needed. I knew I’d made a misstep, though it took me a couple of years to correct it. I was soon in a deep depression – or rather, deeper, as I came to understand over time that I had actually been depressed for years. I stopped going to classes and, as you might imagine, this didn’t really help matters. My low point came when I spent a week in my dorm room, leaving only to go to the bathroom, contemplating the end of my life. I remember we were selling M&Ms as a fundraiser for my new sorority pledge class, and I had a case of them in my room – so this is what I ate for the week. You know, I liked M&Ms pretty well and all, but a solid week of them is too much for anyone. And then, I ran out of M&Ms.

That was a hard note, but there it was. Once again, change had arrived, like it or not, and fight it though I might, I was going to have to either lay down and die or take new steps. You know, I didn’t want to. But I was hungry. So I went to the dining hall.

It’s funny to me that, looking back now, I don’t remember what I ate, but I do remember sitting down at a table where I sort of vaguely recognized some people from my dorm floor. And I remember there was a girl there who lived across the hall from me who introduced herself as Jenny Nelson. Jenny was offering a running monologue on how messed up her week had been. She was aggravated, and loud, and wicked funny. I remember a laugh sort of tore out of me, all unbidden, in response to something Jenny said, and she looked at me with interest – like, here is someone who gets me. And I knew I had made my first real college friend.

I’d like to be able to report that things were easy after that, that life just worked itself out, but this isn’t the case. I had dug myself into a hole that I now had to climb out of. I had to track down professors, make apologies, start again. I had outstanding bills, and check overdrafts, and I had to make it right with my bank and my parents. I had a case of M&Ms to pay for. But things did, slowly, get better. In addition to finding my new friend Jenny, I found a therapist. I got into a show, where I made new friends – still today some of the best friends of my life. I failed a class for the first time ever, but I learned that I could survive a failed class. And I didn’t fail everything. I aced my poetry class and realized that I’d known for some time that I could write as well as sing. I began to contemplate a change of major. And little by little, I learned that I could do hard things, that I didn’t need my ex-boyfriend to define me, that I could have my own adventure, that I belonged at college.

I fought change, but it came all the same. And ultimately, I was changed. I chose change. And I was better for it.

Change can be a chaotic teacher. Sometimes we seek it, to be sure – but often, change finds us. Sometimes it shows up like a neighbor, there ostensibly for a cup of sugar, who we find ourself inviting in, who winds up at our kitchen table, telling us about their life. Maybe we are aggravated at first, pressed for time, unbelieving at the demands of hospitality. But then, if we quiet our minds and listen, maybe we find ourselves engaged, involved, befriended. Unitarian Universalists are often accustomed to seeking change or, more challenging still, to making change – which may, over time, reinforce with us the notion that we are the author of change, in charge of where it’s headed. This is much to the good, of course. All around us we see the need for change – unkindnesses or inequities that cry out for change – and it’s important that we understand ourselves as empowered to seek it or help make it. But I think it helps when we also understand that change happens – that it is its own imperative force in the universe – that it shows up anywhere, everywhere, often unannounced, often making demands all its own. When we are not the author of change, but its reader, its audience, maybe it’s useful to understand that our power lies in how we respond. Will we rise to meet it? Will we let go and laugh? Will we own our mistakes, make amends, make new friends, find new ways of being? These are small decisions, and there’s a humility in them, but they are not less important for that. They can help us to find our resiliency. They can help us to live, and learn, and keep growing.

© September 20, 2018