Community

What is this thing, community?

I feel like a community would be a place of really being known and accepted for the person that you are - regardless of how different all the members of that community may be. So... shouldn't our primary responsibility be to our families - the original communities God placed us in?

I've been struggling with this a lot lately.

I've been feeling guilty because this summer I do not want to live at home. I feel like I am way too much of a black sheep there and I truly feel like my presence in that house makes every family member unhappy. Personally, by the end of last summer I was nearly suicidal with grief over how little I fit in anymore.

I may move into an intentional community here in Guelph for the summer. It just feels as though I'm taking the easy way out, scrapping one intentional community, the one I was born into, for another one - a more vegetarian-friendly, earth-friendly, Shane-Claiborne-fan-friendly one.

My Mom cried when I told her I wasn't going home this summer. She's taking it personally and feels like I think she's an awful mother. I think she must have forgotten how awful things really were when I was around.

I just... don't know what to do.