CAMPSICK, DAMN IT.
I realized today that camp is the place I spend the third-most amount of my time, and moreso, probably the place I've spent the third-most amount of my life. It breaks down like this:
1. Home.
2. School.
3. Timbercrest.
School does not count, because attendance there is compulsory. Home is likewise, since I live in the middle of nowhere.
I live more than an hour away from the place I'd most like to be, and it physically hurts.
I've been debating, what with the change in camps directors, as to whether I should go back to camp this summer or not. February is a horrible time for one to decide what they want to do in July. Summer-sickness piles onto camp-sickness, and schoolwork makes me long for a life where problems are only as complex as 'Tameka called Denay stupid-- how does one deal?' and 'is this rash dangerous?*'
So I'm probably idealizing the camp-counselor life, since I'm not there right now. But when you can close your eyes and describe the exact, dusty-red color of the lodge floor's paint, and know where the endless copies of 'Cherry Ames, Veteran Nurse' are in the dusty library shelves are, you know a place is special. I have memories for every. Single. Inch of that place. It doesn't matter if it's the place by the parking lot where Nemo and I wrote on rocks with Sharpies commemorating a long Sunday of greeting parents, or the marsh across the lake, where I used to believe lions lived-- camp is in my blood. It worked its way in with the chlorinated water that we were all urged to drink by the gallon.
The pay is shit. Sometimes every piece of clothing I had with me was wet. Sometimes I wanted to scream and lock myself in the stinking latrines because the only way of getting dinner for twenty starving seven-year-olds was to somehow conjure a fire from sopping woodlands and soggy cardboard.
I'm addicted to the place, okay? Rationalizing fails.
I'm applying again for summer '06. I have to.
Argh.