"guns and bunnies ... yes its a new rock group ... did you get your tickets to the guns and bunnies concert??" - mrs macnamee

i feel like im going to to die. my soul is suffocating. im not expecting anyone to understand how i feel because noone truely knows how much camp means to me. if i dont get in this summer i might as well just die. it kills me every day just thinking that this summer i may not get to see that small patch of land they call camp stella maris.

sometimes i just want to cry for my self. at camp i literally cried for my future self because i knew i wasnt going to be there at camp in the middle of january. i miss going down to the bathrooms everynight to meet the boys and say good night. i miss dan coming into our cabin and playing guitar for us before we went to sleep. i miss sisqo and his crazy stories of climbing mt. everest. yeah i believed him ...

i miss the sound of our footsteps on the wood bridge as we went over to the waterfront and the seaweed fights in the sailboats. i miss senior night prayers. there are a few incredibly meaningful moments at camp that keep playing over and over in my brain literally every day.

on the last night of the 1st week we had senior night prayers on the hill overlooking camp. as we sat there one of the counselors, tim, began to talk about how we need to cherish the memories because we would never be campers again. he told us to look down at the little kids running around and to always remember that moment. i have never had a more vivid picture in my head. the view of all the kids having no cares in the world is still painted vividly in my brain. its not fading.

just thinking about this makes my chest tighten.

as he spoke we were all sobbing because none of us ever wanted to let go of any of it. our sobs were painful but they brought us closer than ive ever been with a group of people in my life. we all had the mutual horror of having to leave camp.

im not exaggerating

horror.

imagine a world where you are you and everyone is your friend. enemies are infrequent and ignored. its a perfect world where the counselors arent your parents for 2 weeks ... they are your best friends, no matter how old you are. the air is thick with imagination and creativity. and you have to be what they expect you to be ... yourself. perfect strangers become life-long friends in 2 days time and its normal.

this entry is for noone besides me. writing about it preserves the memories that i desperately have to hang on to.

at camp you always hear ghost stories and they always freak you out. so at night you are extra sensitive to that bumping and scratching noise you may hear. one night during the holdover we had to stay in different cabins. i went to my old cabin with a few other girls in the dark to retreive my toothbrush. i grabbed it and on my way out i noticed something hanging from the rafter over my bunk in my poriferal vision. i as i shined my flashlight on it our faces gaped in horror ... it was a noose. we completely freaked out. i told everyone. i sent a counselor, dan, to get it down. when he came back he himself thought it was pretty freaky. but he couldnt understand why someone would put a shoe-lace noose abouve my bunk. it was also a poorly made noose. definitly not tied right. he was talkinga about how it looked like somehting someone would use to hang their flashlight from ...

then it hit me ... the girl that slept there the week before had used it to hold he flashlight, and i had completely forgot about it. *sigh* good memories.

i remember the last night together i sat with my best friend ryan as they played music in the dark while we thought of our time togehter. both of us were bawling. my most vivid memory of all is when we were walking out of the chapel from senior closing night prayers and we had our arms around eachother he turned to me with teary eyes and said "chelsea, i dont want to go home". im not sure if it was the words that he said or the tone that he said them in or my complete understanding for those words, tone and pain that still haunt me today.

camp has been the most wonderful and painful experiences of my life.

i miss it.

~chels (gwenevere)