Community Life

Community life is a very interesting thing...especially when it's a community of about 400/500 people! Just the other day I was talking with Carolyn and she told me that I've finally "ran into the wall". She said that it's normal when living in a community and that she "hit the wall" very hard when she first started living here, too (she's been living here for 4 years now). She also told me that one of the women here told her once that if someone is living here and loves it then they're not really living community life and they're not supposed to be here.

These last days I've gone through a lot....I've been having problems with all of the "girls and guys" rules and all the pressure and gossiping. About a week and a half ago I started hanging out with the guys a lot and, well, people aren't too happy about that. At first, we hung out just like I usually do with my guy friends, but then, after a few days, I realized that JPUSA has all these rules that I didn't really know about and so now I've become pretty much paranoid about everything. It's very annoying cuz I stopped being so worried about what others think when I was 14 and now I'm back to worrying again. I need to be careful with what I wear, I need to be careful with how I act with others, I need to make sure that there's always another girl with me when I hang out with the guys, I need to be careful with where I am and what I'm telling people....ugh!! It's driving me crazy! Fortunately, Michael (one of the guys I hang out with the most who's lived here almost his whole life) is really good at reminding me about the rules. I think it's silly though that there always has to be another person of your same sex. I mean, if there's a bunch of people with you it's not like something's gonna happen. Oh well. I'm trying.

Another problem these last few days has been exactly that which Linda Shreiner had warned me about...I let others burn me out. I have the bad habit of thinking of others more than myself. So, at night time, when I should go to bed early, if someone comes up to my room and wants to hang out, I tend to prefer hanging out then going to bed early. And when someone's depressed I tend to try to help them as much as I can, be there for them and get myself emotionally involved. Now, these last days, 3 of the 5 girls I hang out with have been very depressed and this has effected me a lot. For some reason, I didn't really realize that my feeling empty and drained out emotionally could have to do with them.

Unfortunately, because of all this (being annoyed with the rules and emotionally drained out) and then spending almost all day at the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) class downtown (which I need to go to for work), I didn't have the greatest of consequences. In fact, after spending most of the day in front of the computer, not digesting very well the asian food I had for lunch and getting car sick when coming back home, when one of the girls came up to me and told me that the girl that has been depressed over her close friend's suicide (which happened 3 months ago) had just found out that another friend of hers committed suicide, I just bust out into tears and spent dinner crying at the table.
This meltdown, however, made me see how fortunate I am because I have great people around me who really do care about me and love me. The thing I love about living in community is the whole sense of a great big family and how we've obviously become pretty close since we're always together and how I know that I can always count on my friends here. I've never really had friends like these before and it's just so nice that when I'm sad and sick they let me cry and that they take care of me. So in the end, the good is way better than the bad and I feel happy =)