The Summer Your Life Changes

A 2nd-Person Point of View Letter to Myself

As a teen you lived through a global pandemic, which not only physically distanced you and socially distanced you from practically everyone in your life. You stayed close with your best friend - obviously. However, you were stressed about starting college and not being one hundred percent sure about the choices you felt slightly pressured to make; so it’s only understandable that you isolated yourself more than necessary. If only you could take this time to travel the world, or learn new skills, or finally feel free from the life of a high school student in a small town.

As a young adult just finishing up your first semester at college and now having doubts about what you want to do with your life, you enter a confusing and slightly concerning mindset. Instead of your anxiety skyrocketing, it seems to disappear. When asked by a stranger to apply to a summer camp where you’d have to live and work with the same people everyday - none of whom you knew that at point - you confidently agreed immediately. When your parents try to bring up logical points as to why you should take a moment and think about this, you shut them down stubbornly and continue to email the stranger back.

As the winter months bring in the cold weather, the product of the decision you made in the previous fall months starts to take form. You get new emails from the Assistant Director, you have an interview that you haven’t prepared for but for some reason you aren’t nervous about. The old you would’ve had sweaty palms and talking points already studied; the new you sets up your computer in five minutes and only realizes then that you have no idea what questions they might ask you.

The closer the summer gets the sooner school comes to an end. As a young adult now having even more doubts about your studies, you still feel a strange sense of calm and peace when thinking about this random new place you were going to be dropped off at within the next two months. Still having no idea who you’ll be living with, except for a few names and knowing how they are supposedly friends of friends, of friends, of strangers.

In a span of three weeks your life is flipped upside down. But again, through it all you feel a sense of calm, a sense of peace, that everything will work out the way it's supposed to. Your mom calls it the Lord’s presence, your friends suggest therapy, your sister thinks you’re dissociating from the real world. While these may all be valid explanations and solutions, they don’t help you understand just how much this summer will change your life.

You pack up your things and tearfully leave your first dorm room. You start your off-season job within the next couple days, not even settled in your childhood bedroom fully. After a week getting into the job routine, and with all the suitcases finally packed and put away, you still don’t feel completely settled in your room. But it doesn't matter, because during the second week your house will burn down. You spend that second week working long days, and moving from friends’ house to friends’ house every couple of nights. First you get a text, then a visit from the strange man who is your boss at the Camp; after everything that's happened, you still have no anxieties or doubts about your decision to pack up and leave for twelve weeks.

The third week is the first week of your new life. You pack quite literally everything into one suitcase and your dad drops you off at the camp. You start to meet the staff and can now put people to the names you’d seen on social media. You feel like the new kid as everyone seems to already know everyone else, but still not a doubt or anxiety in existence. Taking a liking to the Assistant Director, who you would later say has the personality of squirrel, you start to take in every word he says as he gives you a tour of the camp. Throwing yourself into lifeguard training there’s no time to stop and think about how physically close you’re getting to people you have known for only a little over two hours. Feeling as though you’re sitting on the sidelines at dinner, there's a moment you get to yourself, but you only feel shy and curious about everything and everyone.

Over the course of the next few weeks you start to show your personality, until eventually you don’t care anymore. These people are stuck with you for the rest of your summer so might as well let them see your whole personality at once. You start to make snarky jokes, showing your sense of humor. You start to openly show in your own way how you care for those you feel especially close to.

You become close friends with the Waterfront Director, and the Assistant Director; whether this is because of how much time you spend working alongside them, or if it's because you give off an older and more mature personality that they will continue to point out to you, you’re still not sure. Your job position brings you closer to the Chaplain and Director, feeling like both their friend and a family member. The stranger who reached out about the job position? She comes up every weekend to check in and hang out with you. A few of the Program Staff have taken to referring to you as the “Camp Mom”, you know where everything is that could possibly be needed at a moment's notice. This may be your first summer, but you learn to tell the stories, sing the songs, and help run camp as smoothly as if you’d been there for years; so much so, that on the last night the Assistant Director forgot you were a first year staff, and when realizing his mistake then went on to say that you had such “Returner Energy”.

Personally over the summer you grow in your faith, your social skills, and your self identity begins to shift. No longer anxious, for whatever reason it may be, you look forward to the unplanned moments that the day brings. You find the independence that most find in their first year of college away from home. You aren’t scared to show strangers who you really are, to speak up when you deem it necessary, to openly show how much you care for those around you.

Your life changed drastically, most outsiders would say it was because of the house fire, others would say it was living in the middle of nowhere for twelve weeks. And while those were contributing factors, what really changed your life was the time and space you got to find yourself. The reason you stopped having anxiety about big life changes? Was because you knew somewhere inside of you, from the very first week, that everything was going to work out for the best.

Now, as a mature, spunky, young lady who’s still trying to figure out what the future holds, you’re curious and excited. You still have small moments of anxiety, thankfully no longer in the concerning mindset anymore. You’re working through the trauma of the fire, and grieving the loss of the familial connections you made over the summer. You’re continuing to find your independence, and learning how to live life how you’ve always wanted. You wish that you could tell the past versions of yourself every detail of all that you’d experienced in order to silence the doubts and anxieties you once had. You wish you could tell your past self just how much this summer changed your life.