blotchy

yes i'm home sick/crashing from work
last night was a camp meeting. i was tired, flaked out on the couch with my ice pack on my knees, and it's pretty hard to pay attention to executive sort of things in that sort of situation...but i was conscious!!
then someone read a letter.

i didn't blog about this when it happened, just that camp was long and difficult...but, to be more specific, last summer we (candice and i) had 5 girls, 4 of whom, streetwise and boycrazy, bullied the 5th, the sweetest, most amazing little girl ever!
so we knew it was pretty bad, bad enough for e to cry every night and to not be happy... and the simple fact that they were bullying led us to get staff and some other counsellors involved and it was a big deal and those girls spent an entire day doing chores and apologizing (fakely?) and i forgot about how much it ruined my week at camp. (i wonder how those 4 girls are doing, if they're coming back to camp, if they learned anything about life in general. i had a hard time being their counsellor that week, i didn't write them any letters after camp, i probably didn't help them grow up.)
last night at the meeting a letter was read out from this little girl's mom. e STILL has nightmares. nine months later. STILL is dealing with what she suffered at camp. STILL is the sweetest little girl ever, and STILL has been saving up all her newspaper money so she can come back to camp. God is good, even at camp in the middle of this stuff...and e knows it! i've pretty much been bawling my eyes out ever since halfway through the reading of this letter. the rest of the meeting, the whole way home, slept with a kleenex up my nose (at least i slept) and cried right through calling in 'sick' this morning...went back to bed, can't sleep, can't stop thinking about this.
i love the part where e's coming back to camp. i hate the part where i get stuck---how could i have let this happen? why didn't i just put my foot down and keep that door open, why didn't i notice more of what was going on? i hate getting stuck here because if she can forgive those girls, if she can forgive me (she definitely handled it a lot better than i did!) then why can't i? i hate getting stuck here because i feel like i'm too introverted at this point--it's not about me, it's about e. i hate how this happened so long ago and i'm only now really aware of how huge this is. i hate that people are going to say 'there's nothing you can do about it either' and 'it's not your fault' and 'you did what you could' and 'you didn't know about it so stop beating yourself up about it' (please don't) : i KNOW all of this, but i don't like the fact that i still need to hear it. and i don't like the fact that i'm being such a big suck about it. and i don't like the fact that i'm sitting here still bawling my eyes out like i'm so pathetic---ugh stupid self-pity! stop already.





so that's my day, nice end to a great weekend---i think if i'd slept more in the past few weeks i wouldn't be freaking out so much. and i'm very bitter and resentful that i've been working all the time instead of getting the downtime that i really need---but i can't blame dk for that---everyone else at eg is working this much and has issues to deal with, why am i so special that i should get a day off!? i 'survived' last summer, why am i suddenly now falling apart? what am i proving by staying--that girls can landscape? (this is my 4th year.) that i can do it? (this is my 4th year.) should i find an office job? blah. maybe i'll be head cook at camp this summer. :P

shower, then beading

and i think i'll walk over to fcb and get some sun/treat msyelf to another david crowder cd. (haha, IF i can find some shades that will cover enough of my face!)