carleymeiners

I stared blankly at the page.

(3-i) (2+3i)

It was my first test for summer school at North Central Texas College. For some reason I couldn’t remember the material that I knew so well yesterday. I began to multiply the numbers but something didn’t look right. I had forgotten the common sense I knew to figure out this problem; kind of like the way I’ve questioned the past year of my life.

One year ago, I was ecstatic to leave Texas. I wanted a new life, new friends and new experiences. I had lived in Flower Mound since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital as a baby. I wanted to see what the rest of the world has to offer. At the University of Missouri, I fulfilled that. What I didn’t know was that I would be taught more than just how to study and how to avoid jerky frat stars. I’ve faced death, the trials of long distance relationships and the dilemma of trying to become successful on my own. The lesson that I’ve learned all together though is that I have to move past problems I can’t fix or change.

This January my family lost a loved one, my Uncle Charles. I never thought that something like colon cancer would have consumed my family’s lives. It was devastating to be 10 hours away from my family when I needed to be there the most. But it was unfixable. I cried when all my mom had to say to me was “we need to talk.”  I cried when my mom was so upset she couldn’t hold back her tears. I cried when I heard my baby cousin cry about the loss of his father. It seemed to me like the tears just wouldn’t stop. There was no end to my problems.

Throughout my process of grieving over my uncle I began to think that being so far away from home wasn’t the best idea. I felt overwhelmed. I was letting my grades slip from A’s to C’s. I cried at least once a week, unsure of when the next time the hurt was coming. I constantly feared being let go from the journalism school, of being dumped by my long distance boyfriend due to my overflow of emotions and the pressure of distance, or that something else terrible would happen to someone I cared about. All I wanted was to be home, to be with my family, back to the life I had always known.

The feeling of loss began to slowly disappear. At the end of my freshman year, I was able to bring up my grades, keep my relationship in tact and stop worrying about losing someone else. Finally, I was moving forward.

Then in the beginning of June, when I thought everything was perfect I was dumped. I was caught off guard from a relationship I thought was more than it turned out to be. None-the-less I was blessed with a good relationship for as long as it lasted. Boys will be boys, and life moves on. He taught me to control my crazy-girlfriend syndrome, how to play NCAA football on his Xbox, and how to keep a relationship in tact no matter the obstacles you face. This was my  last needed push in order to become a healthy, focused person again, the same way I felt one year ago before I left for school.

I looked back at the math problem:

7i + 9

I had finally figured out the answer and was able to move on.

I ended up doing way better on that test than I thought I was going to. Kind of like how I have ended up being stronger than I ever expected. It seems to me that life is one math problem after another, with a few lessons in between.