My me

I'm not in school this semester. I'm graduating in the fall instead of May, which means summer school. That was something I thought I would never do. I thought it was a mistake, that after the dust from kick-start attempt at registration had settled some miraculous something would have kept me in school, pushing my nose back to the grinding stone. But something even more fulfilling has happened in the absence of that miracle. I've found myself again. I found my me. But one might ask, how was my me ever lost?
Well I think it happens to us all. In exchange for higher education, stability, and well... life, we are all asked to trade something in. After all, nothing is free. And some of what we give for education, stability, and life is sometimes very good to give up. But I'm afraid that the giving just doesn't stop there. It's more of a steady stream. While the education and worldly wisdom flows in, parts of ourselves stream out. We become stronger in ways we never thought possible, but are left with that glassy-eyed look. As if we've lost something, or are constantly looking to distant shores for anything that might be more.
Well, I believe that in all of that knowledge and character building I forsook a huge part of myself. In the hustle and bustle of credits, graduation, and well again, life, my me was somehow lost. It was a wayward stone, a jewel by the road side of my own life. And backtracking through the woods I all but forgot that it had fallen from my heart. And then, "Whats's this?" I saw it, sticking out from the bottom of a rock. I picked it up, dusted it off, gave it a shine with the edge of my t-shirt, and fit it back to my heart.
Who would have thought that something so disheartening, like failing to register the final semester of my senior year could turn out to be so perfect. I've gone from the loss of my grinding stone, to the restoration of a precious stone, a relic, my ruby and diamond; my me.
So what has my me done? Well I'm writing again. I'm singing again. I'm imagining, playing, laughing, and loving again. How could I have gone so long without my me? How?