Who will ever know?

Entry #32: I doesn't feel right

I am not at camp this year.
It is such a strange thing, I can't remember ever not going. I've always gone and now i'm not. I don't like it, this feeling burrowed beneath. Like some one snuffed out one of the few lanterns illuminating the dark. Why am I not there?

Because they didn't want me. Or more clearly last year I didn't have enough punches in my church card, and they doubted the strength of my faith the fuckers. But I fought so hard against the suddenness of it, because they had told me a week before the actual camp started. I had taken the time off, and I had bought a shit ton of stuffies(for really cheap because my works warehouse fucked up the deliveries). I knew, I had this feeling for a long time that it was going to be my last year though I didn't know why. Yet it still hit me like a ton of bricks that they didn't want me. It felt like I was falling and the ground caught me off guard. They caved and put me in the kitchen for a faith evaluation and then came up short on cabin leaders so I got my wish and was put in a cabin. On the morning of the first week no-less.

But this year I didn't even bother, and it hurts. When I was little the one summer camp had a grandma, the speakers wife, who used stuffies to tell stories at campfire. Who everyone referred to as grandma. When I was little, I didn' want to be a princess or a fairy I wanted to be camp grandma. I suppose that I kinda got what I wanted, the summer before everything fell apart the teen camp teens gave me the nickname "Grandma", they didn't use it very often. And they actually thought I was barely older then them. But it meant the world to me, and they won't ever know it.
When I got older and finished L.I.T.E, where they taught me jackshit and if it weren't for my familiarity with the camp and how it ran I would have been absolutely fucked. But I pushed on year after year with the intent to have the most consecutive full summers in a row. To be someone of enough importance that my name got to be in the trivia.

But now I'm not there I threw the streak out the window. It hurts the closer we get to the end of the season. Because should the season end and they haven't even tried to contact me then they didn't need me. My presence was so easily replaceable, that nobody even noticed I was gone, so many years of service and the tower didn't even wobble when my brick was removed. But if they do, do I give in to the rage and the hurt? to let them struggle and not lift a finger to help so they know the damage they have caused isn't so easily fixed. Or do I put it aside and coming running back to that which means much to me. But should I return then it makes my avoidance of it for the rest of the season moot. I ruined my streak for nothing, I threw it away for nothing. I hurts.

That place it holds more value in my heart then any of my own homes. it hurts not the be there.

It is the psychical embodiment of home to me. I only moved three times, which is hardly anything, yet in my little brain they stopped being home. they were houses, I was home as long as my family was there. Any where was home as long as they were there. Yet I look at camp and I see home, a physical home. its not any house i've lived in, only there for summer months, but if you ask me to describe home as a place instead of the people. I would choose camp, it is home, and I miss it.