I Used to Be Smart.

I had a bit of a crisis two nights ago.

I was making the usual circuit of checking Myspace and Facebook, when I saw that I friend had posted some pictures. I haven’t talked to this friend in a long, long time. It’s one of those things where I’ve waited too long. To even give him a call now would be awkward.

He was a friend from Atlanta, during the semester that I spend at seminary. And while I was looking through his pictures, I saw other friends from my time down there — people I genuinely liked. Most of them, I just ran out on without saying goodbye at all. After all the nostalgia had been properly stirred up, the crisis occurred.

Almost three years later, I began second guessing myself. And in the process of that second guess, I began to wonder why I had made that decision, and I started to wonder about all of the ways that decision had changed me.

All (3) of those years ago, I didn’t realize how much I was working through that semester. Looking back, it’s unbelievably clear. I was, for the first time, living somewhere other than Kentucky. I wasn’t simply visiting there, I was living there. I was coming to the grips with the possibility of tying myself to a place other than the place where I had grown up. That was tough. I find it difficult to give my heart away, and I was not willing to give my heart to a city that I did know. My relationship with Atlanta was like my relationship with a lot of people I know. I liked it well enough, but I was always going to hold something back from that town. I would make sure that I was detached from it, that there were no roots to speak of. I was too afraid of what it meant to let that town get a grip on me.

It never really felt like home. It was always, in my mind, just a place I was visiting. I invested my true self in very little. So, from that shallowness, it was easy to uproot. So I did.

I must also be forthcoming and admit that there was a girl involved. She was kind of a big deal. I’m not sure if she knows that. I’m not sure if anyone knows that, but she was, and I’m sure that what happened there mattered to me more than I realized at the time. I was at the point where I just needed a change. I was in a strange city, trying to deal with difficult emotional issues and I had no idea what to do. I felt stuck. I didn’t know how long it was going to take to get past those things, or even if I could.

I think that created a longing in me to be somewhere familiar, in the company of people that I knew I could trust.

There was also the problem of growing up. I had never been forced to. I would never have admitted it at the time, but I was still very much a kid. I was clueless. I had all of this information in my head and I had no idea what to do with it. I could spew it forth at random times and make you well aware of just how much I knew — but that was it. I had no idea who I was. I had no idea how to exist in a world where I was an adult who was responsible for myself. I think, at that point, it was starting to become a reality that I was going to have to be that person. I had no choice but to become a man — and I had no clue how to do it. I was afraid of it.

How could I go through that process in a city that I did not know? With people that I would only let in a little way? I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

So I gave up. I ran away. I abandoned what I was so sure was my calling, made excuses, and came home.

All of this time later, I still genuinely struggle with whether I made the right decision or not. I do not believe that I can go back. I’m sure that I could never go back to Atlanta — to that school. I’m not even sure I can go back to that world — ministry, religion, all of that. Some days, that is all I want to do, but I feel like I’ve burned so many bridges that a life in that world is not even possible again. I feel like I’ve broken the part of me that was called to that. If I haven’t broken it, I’ve buried it so deeply that I’m not even sure how to find it anymore. It’s hidden somewhere under the sales quotas and the student loan payments, and I’m not sure that it’s recoverable — or even if I should recover it.

It’s tough.

There are so many ways in which I have changed — grown, and become what I needed to become — and that’s good. But there are so many ways in which I have lost things that were good.

Most days, it seems like I’m closer to anything than I was then. I’m still utterly clueless as to where I’m going, or what I’m doing. I still stay distant and detached from even the people that are the most important to me. I still haven’t learned to be a man instead of an irresponsible boy.

To be honest, I really don’t know. None of that is really any great epiphany, but it helps. It helps to be able to know why I made a decision that has had a huge impact on my life so far. Even if I don’t know where I’m going, it helps to understand where I’ve been.