Good Morning and Goodbye Stonehill…
The tipping point at Stonehill
“It’s February 19th, 2023… I don’t know what I’m doing” that’s how the video started. Alone in my dorm room with a vase of flowers from my boyfriend behind me I was talking into the camera on my iPhone. I had and black dress on and was wearing my favorite pair of earrings, partially because it was Sunday and partially because making myself look nice was the only healthy way I could think of coping with the events of the night before.
I had been on RA duty and although the night had been pretty quiet, I found myself responding to an incident at 1:30am that would eventually lead to multiple lawsuits and the expulsion of a student. By the time the police left and my residents were sent back to their rooms it was well past 3am and I didn’t have the energy to write up the incident report, so I recorded a voice memo detailing the verbal and physical assaults inflicted upon my residents, the RD, campus police, and myself, planning to write it into a report the next morning. Little did I know I would give that same report countless times in the coming weeks to police investigators and members of the school conduct board. It was exhausting. But I had been exhausted for a long time before that.
Making the decision to leave Stonehill
“I’m going to finish this semester, at Stonehill… not really sure if I’m going to come back though” I spoke into the camera that next morning. I wasn’t really sure who I was recording this video for, myself? My parents? The school? There was a long pause before I started again and the next 4 minutes were spent talking to myself into the camera, about the few things I knew and voicing the uncertainty that was building up inside me. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t the road I had planned on walking. But something didn’t feel right. I had been feeling in my heart a call to change paths for a long while now. I just wasn’t sure how or why or what this change was supposed to look like.
About a month later though, on March 23rd, I officially submitted my withdrawal from the college for the next year. Part of me felt like a complete failure and it took a while to get up the courage to tell people I wouldn’t be returning in the fall. After talking it through with the people I loved at Stonehill though, I realized I hadn’t failed at all. I had simply accomplished my goal sooner than I had anticipated. My intention in coming to Stonehill was to break free from the bubble that is my town (well, technically not even a town, it’s a hamlet). To meet new people, and experience new things, and discover who I am. The two years I spent at Stonehill provided me with all of this.
All I gained from Stonehill
I found a group of friends and mentors who love me for who I am and have helped me to grow in so many ways. I watched my wardrobe change. My voice found a place to be heard. I fell in love with my faith in a way that allowed me to call it my own. I learned to love on my own and to experience and appreciate silence. My appreciation for where I came from grew and I discovered passions for things I never would have thought of on my own. I traveled to West Virginia, Indiana, and even Italy. My relationship with my extended family grew stronger and I learned how to love two places at once.
I learned to take up space and to laugh and to cry and to dance again. I learned to leave things and I learned to stay and I learned that both can be loving. That joyful little dreamer inside me had room to come out and to grow and to exist and she did. I failed at Stonehill and before. I have failed so so many times. But I did not fail in coming to Stonehill. I did not fail in the time and the energy and the money I spent there. I did not fail in deciding it was my time to say goodbye. In fact, I think all of those things have been in some ways my greatest success.
In the End
When I discerned in my heart that it was time to leave, I wrote myself two sticky notes and hung them on my wall. The first read “I will not abandon the person I have found in myself here” the second read “I will acquire freedom, not for the sake of doing what I want, but for the sake of doing what I ought” (thanks Fr. Tim for that second one). I intend to keep those promises no matter where this next season of life brings me.
I may have left Stonehill, but Stonehill will forever be a part of me. And I am forever grateful for that. Until we meet again….
-me ♡
