If you’re wondering why my post was so late last weekend, you’re about to find out why. But don’t worry, as promised I still got my blog to you all by Friday night. You’re too important to miss after all.

There’s been a whole lot of growth in my life within the last few years (at least I’d like to think so) and there’s this one concept that I’ve never quite been able to move past. Call it a personal need to be important to people or be of use to others, but it’s gotten in my way. A lot. Maybe you can relate.

You see, I have always felt the need to not only be just a friend to someone or just a support system but anything they need. No matter what someone is looking for or needs from this world, I have always wanted to be the girl for the job; I am constantly compelled to be their person with all the answers or solutions, even if the role is a few shoe sizes too big that I just can’t fill.

That want, that constant need to be what other people need, it comes with a lot of problems, you know? Problems and unhealthy standards.

Because, no matter how hard I might try, I can’t be everything someone else needs, I’m just not built that way. None of us are. And something about the last weekend of my life truly made me see that.

Last weekend, I officially became a new member of Cal Poly’s WOW Team at our yearly Team retreat. Even though it was raining half the time and none of us had any idea what we were going to be doing, I think it was the epitome of learn by doing and trusting the process. Because days like those, through the beauty and the pain or the growth and the fun, remind me of what college does for us. It lets understand just a little bit more about the world and ourselves along the way.

Imagine this: 40 Cal Poly students, hand picked through several interviews and observationals, to be a part of orientation Team. Then put us all together for one weekend of bonding, early mornings, friendly competition, photos, and late night talks. Something about it, somehow we all just clicked together faster than I thought possible.

And in the process, every person I met opened my eyes to something I haven’t fully grasped before.

Throughout college, for all my life really, I’ve switched from group to group or team to team, just trying to find a place to settle down. Maybe sometimes we find that place, and we stop for a while, enjoying what it means to be okay with where you’re at before things change and it’s time to readjust to reality again. College has been much of the same sequence of events for me, just on a much faster pace than it ever has before.

Since you’ve been on this blog with me for three years, I guess maybe you’ve realized how many things I’ve become a part of at this school—yet, no matter what I get into, I always find something new to jump into next. Because nothing I have found has felt like a safe place to land, to stay for awhile and get comfortable. Sure, I might catch a glimpse of what that looks like for me in this friend, or that roommate, or this one club, but it’s never stuck. That is, until that group found a way to stick to me instead.

That thing about WOW Team, we don’t really pick them. Somehow, they pick us.

Last weekend, I met a whole lot of new people and somehow learned almost all their names in two days. It might sound strange, but I now hold an oddly large amount of affection for people I’ve only known for a week. Maybe because with them, I felt more like I could be enough as I am. Not because they told me that, but simply because I feel that way about every one of them realized that maybe it applies to me too.

Some of them are incredibly funny and can lift any mood going through the room. Others are impossibly kind or open-hearted in a way that makes you feel loved, even by a stranger. And then almost everyone is beautifully intelligent, insightful in a way that makes you feel seen, or heard, understood as you are with no expectations of anything less or more.

They were all little bits of what I look for in my own people, yet not a single one of them could be everything I want in a person. Even surrounded by people who earned their opportunity to be there, just like I did, it took me a minute to realize this. Because while surrounded by so many wonderful people all on that retreat for the same reason, I came to accept that maybe that’s okay.

There are only so many pieces of who I am, all these little bits of my personality or my being that can’t fill the gaps other people need filled. Even as I grow, developing into a more rounded and hopefully insightful person than I’ve ever been, I realize that while I can be a whole lot for certain people, there are some things I simply am not for others. And I’m beginning to be okay with it.

Because at some point, I think somewhere in this life I’m making for myself, I’m picking up people who can fill those holes or those gaps for me along the way.

For now, with my eyes open and ready to learn more as I go, I’m fine just the way I am. This is your reminder that so are you.