Reflections on Camp Killoqua

In a nutshell: I really really liked Camp Killoqua, and it's definitely very high on my list of places to work next summer.

But I tried to delve into the reasons that made me enjoy it so much. I've come up with a couple of possibilities.

First, everything that happens there constitutes to a sense of family. Obviously, after spending a full week with the same people from morning to night, you get to know them pretty well. But a lot of other things too. At meals, the head of the table serves you food and the foot of the table serves you drinks. You don't sit with the same people every meal, but between serving food, watching for the seconds box, passing dirty plates, and the conversations that take place, there is enough interaction that you feel pretty tight with those people by the end of the meal, and for the rest of the week you'll greet them passing by on campgrounds. That's definitely something that's missing from my life.

Second, I love the whole deal with the singing. Singing graces before a meal, teaching songs after a meal, singing before leaving the table, and, most of all, serenade, where the counselors and CITs go around to each cabin group and sing the campers to sleep. It's an interesting dynamic that's created. Flipping through the songbook that Frog gave me, some of the songs are quite morbid. My personal favorite (and also wildly popular among many of the campgoers and counselors) is Char's Song, and it was adapted from a military farewell song. There's one line that goes "some of us, I know, are bound to die." In this sense, Killoqua felt quite raw and transparent--there was no beating around the bush when it comes to sad matters. Many of the songs use lyrics along the lines of "this is goodnight and not goodbye" with a camp-is-ending-but-not-the-friendship notion. It's humbling and down-to-earth, and definitely a bit melancholy. Even so, there is just so much joy. And being surrounded by people who smile in the face of sadness makes me that much stronger and capable of enjoying myself in spite of (what I perceive as) shit in my life. I can really appreciate what I have.

Third, it is so easy to fit in there. The traditions are easy enough to pick up, and typical barriers to interpersonal interaction are nonexistent. While I was there, there were some 5 or 6 foreign counselors (hailing from Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand) as well as maybe 6 states represented. Furthermore, the ages of the counselors ranged from 18 to 40. Yet, even the 8-year-old campers got along with the adults as if they've been childhood friends from years. The camp names tradition is wonderful: all counselors and CITs get a camp name, an alias they go by among each other and the campers. In fact, some of the counselors don't even know the real names of the other counselors. I really liked this because you could see some of the traits or personality of the person reflected in their name, and, as far as I can tell, made everyone more comfortable and open in this new identity. Whatever the hiring process is there, it works, because the counselors are all crazy and fun yet (for the most part) responsible, and when you get a lot of people who are willing to be crazy in public, everyone else who wants to be crazy (aka be themselves) but normally subdues it will be crazy too!

All in all, I had a great time there, and I'm planning on applying for a job there next summer. I don't know what opportunities college will open up, but I can certainly see myself passing up jobs with better pay to work there because it's just a relaxing, carefree environment.

Conversation

It's almost scary how there are certain people I can just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk to, and it never gets dull and I never run out of laughter and we shift from one topic to the next with ease, and it's just relaxing and comfortable even if the topics of our conversation are less than pleasant.

Went to the park in the morning and read a humorous though often confusing book for a while. Then I was joined in the afternoon by K- and we talked about a lot of the people we've met recently and how amazing they are over some light picnicking food, which I think made me look bad because the spaghetti I cooked had cooled and I was gloating about my amazing spaghetti cooking before I realized that heh. I wish we could've chatted more because she's going to China and then I'll have college and that'll suck because talking to her is so damn enjoyable. Then I walked four miles because I forgot to bring money on me and the school bus passes don't work anymore. I was kind of singing as I walked, but after around 200 minutes of conversation I was losing my voice. So maybe not about the chatting more, but maybe like lie in the grass and look at clouds or something.

Tomorrow, I start work, and I'll feel very much like an adult; 9 hour workdays for five days straight, then overnight days for six days straight. I kind of have this voice in the back of my head telling me today was the last day of my childhood. As far as legal definitions are concerned, I'm an adult in less than a month. I'm definitely not complaining about today, and of course as D- told me (in a rough paraphrase) last time I brought up how we're going to be adults soon, youthfulness isn't defined by age unless you let it be. I was surprised by such wise words from his mouth, of course, but I liked that sentiment.

Long story short, I'm pretty sure this was hands down my day best spent all summer.

(except with more overcast skies, cause like, it's Seattle.)

Not invincible

I think I sorted through my feelings a bit more.

Today, I went to downtown Seattle (Westlake Center) to meet up with a few other rising freshmen who will be my classmates next year at Stanford. Luckily for me, I live only 20 minutes away; S- drove an hour and 45 minutes or something to get there.

It was great. We walked around proudly wearing our red and white, sang to Under the Sea with some of the buskers, visited the first Starbucks in the world, got fondly licked by police horses, taste tested varieties of olive oil (blackberry, orange and dark chocolate, pear and cranberry, among others), got lost and asked for directions pretending we were Californians, got soaked touching "the butt" (the International Fountain), took a ton of silly pictures, sunbathed in a triangle formation on each other's stomachs (until more people joined, when it just turned into a pile of red and white and grey), and ate good mall fake Asian food.

In a nutshell, I was feeling pretty invincible. I've been told a number of times that I had my future in my hands now that I'm going to Stanford, and it felt true in those six or seven hours.

At around 8:15 my mom picked me up and we headed home. My mom missed the express lane and when I pointed it out she said she had a lot on her mind and wasn't paying attention. I asked what it was, and she told me that the mammogram she had done earlier that day revealed she had cancer. We don't know yet if it's benign or malignant; she has 6 hours' worth of examinations and tests to undergo in the next two business days.

I was pretty determined to be strong for her. I've been watching Avatar the past few weeks (both The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra), and those kids go through way tougher shit than I do. Yes it's a cartoon, but the notions are the same. Be strong in the face of adversity, blahblah.

In addition to that news, something's also happened to my mom's youngest brother (who is 3 years older than her). He had lent us money when we were buying our house like 6 years back, but now he's in financial trouble. For some reason, he had closed the shop he owned and sold his cars. Obviously, my mom wanted to return the favor. However, with a pending divorce, her cancer is a huge financial burden once the divorce goes through and she no longer has access to the insurance policy family plan through my dad's employer.

Last Thursday, I had turned in my application for the Stanford Summer Engineering Academy (SSEA), and I heard today that people were getting their results back by email. I went home and checked my email. Nothing.

It's all crashing down on me now. My dad's a dick and everything that happens with his side of my family inevitably get to him, and if  I could somehow pay my way through college myself, I'd be more than happy to cut off all communication with him. I didn't even want him at my high school graduation. My mom's side of the family actually has people with some level of decency, but look what good it's done them. My mom's sister had an abusive, alcoholic husband, and, now divorced, she's single at the age of 50 and some change. My older maternal uncle divorced when their son was in college (sounds familiar?), remarried, and now I have a cousin who's 2. My younger maternal uncle is still happy in marriage, but something's happening with his financial security apparently. And of course my parents are separating, and my mom has cancer. I got into Stanford? So what? The world is by no means at my doorstep. In fact, if anything, it's only been slipping further and further away in the last few months. And of course, there's nothing I can do about it, because plenty of Ivy League graduates don't have jobs, and I'm not even like top of my class kind of thing, SSEA kind of proves it.

I'm pretty much Harry Potter. And when everyone goes home on vacations, my mom will be in Taiwan and only in the best case scenario. The worst case scenario I don't even want to type out.

And when I thought of that analogy, it made me realize, I'm pretty much utterly alone. As far as loved ones go, I have it worse than Harry. Having your parents die before you were conscious is terrible, I'm not denying that. But I'd take pleasure knowing my parents died to save me. And also, Harry had the Weasleys to stay with. I might be great with people (all the new people I met today + the strangers on the street seem to suggest that that's true), but how many people do I feel close enough to just crash at their house for a while? None, really. College is hitting me full force right now, it's sunk in that I'm done with high school. It's only a month and 3 days before I'm legally an adult; it's about time I mentally readied myself for it. And I'm fucking scared as hell.

Overactive Imagination?

Very often, I have this introspective dilemma where something someone says or writes haunts me for hours or days. A lot of times, it's accompanied by the self-doubt where I think that I'm reading too much into things, but I always end up concluding that it's better too assume that all the subtexts are actually there because it's better safe than sorry, in a weird way.

I feel like it's a perpetuation of an arguably traumatic elementary school (I think?) lesson on subliminal messaging. It was about how the media portrays things or something, and how advertising tries to infiltrate your subconscious. I also remember that Sprite commercial from years ago that was titled or nicknamed or something "Subliminal Messaging" and had a lot of people partying and holding Sprite bottles while they danced and it ended without ever actually having the word "Sprite" in plain font and it freaked me out.

Basically, when I hear or read things, mostly from people I know, that might have something to do with me, I frequently assume it is for me. It's like those teachers that tell the entire class something and then follow it up with "you know who you are" and everyone in the class assumes its them even though it's actually nobody. Unless I'm just making that up from some article I might've read from a psychology blog, or about Nazis.

I think it boils down to me not being able to tell when something is relevant to me, or merely relatable for me. There are times when it's remarkably clear that something is relevant; usually that's the easy one. It's easy to tell when something definitely is meant for my eyes or ears. But when things aren't meant for me, it becomes hazy in my mind. I think this also makes me self-centered, which carries a pretty negative connotation. Maybe paranoia or self-conscious is better, but I feel like this isn't necessarily an inhibition or like some mental handicap; instead, it helps me become a better person because I assume criticisms are about me. I am totally not sure at all.

And guilt, that's a whole different thing. I'm almost sure I can guilt trip myself. If I don't live up to my own expectations, I then feel guilty about doing all the things which I attribute to my failure. It is so easy to guilt trip me, and I can recognize it's a guilt trip, and I'll still fall for it. I guess this makes it so that it's pretty easy to use me, and I think I'm getting better at barricading my brain from unfounded accusations or negativity, but it's still a struggle right now.

I guess it's not really a whole different thing. So often I feel the need to assume responsibility for things that aren't necessarily my fault, and of course the guilt is doubly or more worse when I know that it's about me. And it's a horrible feeling. I distinctly remember back in 8th grade a friend of mine wrote on her blog that guilt is a magnifying glass of pain, and I loved that analogy.

You'd think knowing this problem would make it easier to deal with it. I thought so too, and after coming to this realization a couple of months ago, and then talking to a few likeminded people about it--fortunately, I might add, it appears I'm not the only one who sucks at dealing with guilt--today, in a casual conversation I totally fell into this sort of mental trap and didn't realize it until she told me "it's okay, I [just] love making people feel unnecessarily guilty." Wow, great going, self.

All in all though, I'm not sure I would trade how I approach emotions and people for a different way. Even though I always assume the worst, I feel like in the long run it'll be better than always assuming the best. Because there certainly are times when I just hit a low point and am ashamed of myself whether others are or not, and I firmly believe that that shame will be a better catalyst for personal change or growth than people telling me outright that I need to change, because I can be really stubborn.

Wow my last two weeks with regards to someone totally makes sense now. You will never get me to do anything about my stubbornness telling it to my face, but after a little reflection you've caused me to kind of embrace it as a flaw I need to change I think? Whatever happened, thanks. I hope we never not talk again.