White Stag - 3.5

Everybody is at camp and I have never felt more alone in my life and I thought that maybe if I wrote about White Stag and spilled my heart out onto the page it would make me feel better so here I am at half past 1 in the morning trying my best not to stain my pillow with tears I miss everybody so much I miss being a PC I miss the feeling of being surrounded by love and joy. A lot of people ask me why I love White Stag so much especially when dust clouds rise every time I walk and mosquitoes cover my arms with itchy bumps and sweat trickles down my cheek like a tear drop but honestly the answer is simple; when I'm at White Stag, it's like the earth stops spinning. Time stops, and it's like I'm trapped in a picture in one of those smiling candids of a family behind a shield of glass that preserves a memory in time forever it's like I'm in one of those photographs except it's not forever it's only for a couple of days and then the glass shatters and the bubble bursts and everything is back to normal but that normal is not okay when my normal has become White Stag when I wake up every morning wondering how long I have to get ready until Opening begins when I go to meals and do grace and cookies like it's second nature when I sit on a bench in the Campfire Bowl sandwiched in between two best friends and I feel at home when I think of home and my mind wanders to Piney Creek when I hate the goddamn outdoors but at White Stag I can't help but be in awe of nature's exquisite masterpieces. When I'm at White Stag I don't think of anything other than White Stag I don't think about piano or debate or tennis or the SAT or AP classes or the last fight I had with my parents or how somebody from school is mad at me. Everything melts away and I am living in a pure ecstatic exhilaration and then camp ends and I feel empty and hollow and I return back to my regular world of stress and compulsions and grades and college preparations. This year, every time I felt like stomping up the stairs and slamming the door and punching my pillow and screaming into my backyard at night, I would think about the next staff development or about camp or about a previous heartfelt memory and that would be enough to carry me through to the next day and I don't know how to live without White Stag anymore I don't know who to talk to when I desperately need somebody to listen I don't know what to look forward to it's like my life was a blank canvas before I entered the program and now this camp has painted it a vivid blend of extraordinary hues. The candidates will be arriving in the morning and I won't be there and it breaks my heart into a million little shards.