I've always wondered what happens after tsunamis, hurricanes. How do organisms know what to do to get better? Why do corals regrow, fish keep swimming? Who taught them how to build from the ground up? Start over?

This talk took me a long ass time to write because the truth is I've never been able to answer the question of what happens after tsunamis and hurricanes? What happens after destruction takes place? I wanted to stand up here today and give y'all all the answers in the world. I wanted to show an idealistic image of myself, and my fourth day made me a fraud. To Be a perfect role model, and tell you how to rebuild in times of distress. But I don't know all the answers. I only know my take on the world. So I decided to ruin that image straight from the beginning so that I would have to be fully honest and transparent about what I have learned through trying to live the fourth. My name is Gabi and I have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a bit of anxiety and my fourth day has been a roller coaster of some really low lows but also some pretty fucking awesome highs. I most recently hit rock bottom for the second time in my life but I am here and I am standing. Now that we got that out of the way, I am super excited to be up here. It is actually absurd to me to think that 3 years ago this weekend (and a few months… postponing kairos hit hard) I was sitting in all your seats (not literally but like low-key). The truth is this program means the absolute world to me.

You may be reflecting on this weekend thinking about all these wonderful leaders and the vulnerability they showed, maybe you're thinking about how proud you are of yourself being vulnerable, maybe you are thinking this was a pretty average weekend, or maybe your thinking that I have no idea what you are thinking. All of these are fair responses. I remember the feeling I had when I first went on Kairos. I felt like I was treading on air, so weightless. We call that a Kai-High. I started to build myself up from my first rock bottom. Things were going pretty well.

So this weekend maybe a lot of people have said to LT4, or Live the Fourth. You may be questioning what the heck does that mean? So I am going to manage expectations and tell you I may never tell you the exact meaning or definition of what that means, but I am going to tell you my own experience of trying to figure it out.

When I finished attending my first kairos freshman year fall semester I was so sure that I understood what this "live the fourth" meant. It meant that life was perfect, things do not affect you, you can just let everything roll off your shoulders. Sadness, anxiety who dat

Now idealistically that sounds awesome, never feeling sad or scared or angry. But when that didn't work out for me I felt really lost. It took me a long time to realize that this was not what living the fourth meant at all. I ended up coming back to the program to lead, sharing the obstacles I faced, being completely open. I was hype for that Kai-High feeling to return. After Leading Kairos spring semester of my sophomore year I was not ready for what life had in store for me. I really struggled after leading. I had just opened all the wounds I was working so hard to close. I had felt so fragile, anxious, and didn't understand why. I went from having not even a hand full of people knowing my traumas to a group of over 40. Yet instead of talking to the people, I cared about. I went back to my old ways, threw on a mask, and labeled this experience as amazing. That I was living this "perfect 4th day".

I spent the summer living at Fairfield and interning in CT, it was an awesome experience but also incredibly lonely and anxiety-driven. I didn't know anyone up there and everyone was older than me. But because I believe that living the fourth meant not feeling these feelings, I pushed everything deep down. I had a pretty bad/trauma-inducing experience during the summer that threw me for a loop, making me question a lot of my growth progress, making me question my worth. I pushed it to the back of my head, hoping it would heal itself. Once the fall semester started I was sure that I would find my way back to this Kai High. WELP as you would expect that didn't happen considering I wasn't facing any of my problems head first. I was "fixing" all my problems by ignoring them. Effective, I know. I had been gifted with an amazing internship. Yet rather than feeling accomplished, I struggled to find a feeling of belonging. I looked to the people I worked with that all came from ivy league schools and then there was me. I got to a point where I completely lost myself, trying to make other people love me. I needed the validation, I craved it. It didn't matter how bad they were to me. I let them get away with it. I clung to the idea of people, hoping they would show me, love. Maybe enough love to teach me how to love myself. Soon this semester brought restlessness and anxiety. The nightmares of my past traumas kept me awake, I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid of what I was going to see. I was going weeks only getting a total of 10 hours of sleep. I was diagnosed with PTSD at the end of that semester and damn did that suck, I remember walking out feeling so defeated. It felt as if I would always be fragile, too fragile for anyone to love. I was so sure that I was living the worst 4th day ever. All I could think was GREAT. I am absolutely never good at this, I am never going to be more than my weaknesses. I was incredibly embarrassed. So maybe your wondering what happened. .

Now I am not going to be one of those "Abroad Changed me" people… except I am totally am an abroad changed me person. I started doing a lot of realizations, made a lot of progress with asking people for forgiveness, by doing some forgiving myself. I left for abroad thinking this whole PTSD thing was a hoax. I was all better, CURED one could say. Trauma has officially been erased from my memory. LOL, we will get back to that one.

So at this point, I was back on you know what maybe my definition of live the fourth wasn't so perfect. Maybe just maybe I had to do some reevaluating. When abroad I decided I wanted to try new things and figure out the important things in my life and my future. A memory that I always look back on is skydiving. I never minded risks so it wasn't off-brand of me to jump out of a plane. But I can't even put into words how freeing this experience was. It made me realize that life is so short and so unpredictable.. Remember that Kai-High I talked about, the feeling was really similar. In a way, it was the same. I felt weightless, it was everything I needed in the moment. I ended up getting sent home early from abroad because #covid.

But covid gave me a long time to think about the world around me. Now I'd be lying to say that I figured out exactly what this fourth day meant. But soon after I got sent home I ended up choosing to apply to direct k38. It was an extremely challenging decision for me to make. This program is a cornerstone to my faith and of my growth. But I was facing an internal dilemma. My faith has always come as a struggle was I really the right person to be directing? When reflecting on this decision I wanted to see when my faith was the strongest and when it was its weakest. I realized that when I challenged myself my connection with God was the strongest. Whether that be going to church the first time alone trying to rebuild my trust in god, ordering food on the phone, going to dinner and asking for a table for one, hiking solo, or standing up here with this Kairos community. These reflections made me realize that I needed to apply and I needed to challenge myself and my faith once more. I needed to show others that it's okay to not have a linear relationship with God or with faith. That struggles are okay. Imperfections are okay. So i applied and Surprise Shawty, I am here, I got chosen to direct K38. I was so hype. I thought to myself. I cannot wait to tell people about what the fourth day means. SICK

If you have been listening, I never really understood what the fourth day was, so this was going to be a lot harder than i thought when I discerned to direct. However, I felt so-called to take the position. Maybe that was god's way of pushing me to challenge myself, maybe it was me being optimistic who knows. All I know is I'm glad I said yes.

Well, school started, my senior year. I have never felt so disconnected from myself. I simply had no idea why. I was director of programming for FUSA, something I really wanted, was director for K38, sitting on a bunch of boards for the university, tons of job prospects, law school in the future.. From the outside looking in, I had it all together. I was perfect, which is exactly what I wanted everyone to think. Guess this is my time to expose myself, throw myself in the center light.

I wasn't perfect and I did not have it all together. I spent countless days crying over FUSA, feeling uncertain about law school, and even After the first day of Kairos team meeting. I cried scratch that, I cried before the team meeting too. I was a literal fraud. I wasn't as good or as put together as prior directors. I had no idea who I was, or why I was chosen to do these things. I was a terrible role model, someone had to be better picked for these positions. I was supposed to give this talk about living the fourth day and I simply was tearing apart at the seams, I had no idea what the fourth day meant, all I knew was that I was not living it correctly.

To make things better, seniors were put in lockdown at the beach. Great, time to be alone in my thoughts. I went through a full spiral. My mind felt like a prison and I had a life sentence. In the beginning, I had mentioned a second rock bottom. Lol this was the rock bottom I was talking about. I completely isolated myself to a point that the only social interaction I was having was meetings that were already on the calendar. I refused to talk to my roommates spending days in bed doing homework or work. Nights were spent crying on the porch or going on drives. It was a good day if I ate even one meal, most days I was going with eating barely half a granola bar. Was finding excuses not to talk to my parents, so that they wouldn't know what was going on. It's really difficult when you catch yourself not being you when you feel your whole world falling apart before your eyes, almost in slow motion. The way I think best to explain what these days felt like was as if I was boogie boarding and got pummeled by a wave which forced me underwater just to swim to the top of the water, barely catching my breath and get smacked by another wave. A never-ending cycle. As if I was caught up in a surf zone. I begged God to reach his hand out to pull me out from the waves. Help me make it through this one. I had done it before, HE had helped me do it before. But this time it was different. There was no REASON for my sadness, no reason for my hopelessness, no reason for my dissociation from reality. After one of the worst nights during this prison sentence, I sought help. After calling a hotline, I made an appointment. Turns out this feeling I had been feeling was a PTSD flare-up, a trigger that created an avalanche. HA, and I thought my trauma was cured. The good thing about this was that having this awareness made it feel a bit more normal. Blame it on my mind. The downside of this is the uncertainty of when this feeling will return. It is something I am still so incredibly scared for.

Quarantine lifted. Things were supposed to go back to normal, I was supposed to spend hours on end doing a class or overseeing FUSA stuff or procrastinating LSAT studying. But how do things go back to normal when you feel so isolated from everyone. That being said, I have some really awesome friends who stuck by my side. They love me in my darkest hours even when it takes me a week to even mumble a hi to any of them. Meeting with this great group of leaders each week inspired me to keep fighting. When I was with them I was able to see God even if he felt so far away.

So where am I at three months later since this postponement? Irrecognizable from that girl sitting on that porch. I am investing in myself, doing things for myself, teaching myself how to love myself, focusing on my spiritual journey and my relationship with God. Watching countless movies with my roommates, staying up late cackling over stupid tik toks, enjoying the work I do, enjoying the classes I am taking. Being grateful for each and every day that I wake up. Being grateful for each and every experience and the single moment the good and the bad.

Maybe I don't know the answers to what happens after hurricanes and tsunamis take place. But what I do know is that the world keeps spinning. Coral regrows. Fish keep swimming. For a while, I struggled to write this talk. I thought that I was a fraud. How am I to tell you how to live the fourth when I have been struggling. I guess that maybe that's why I am kind of perfect to give this talk. Because I have and will always struggle. Because that's life. I know I'll make it though because I have been given the opportunity to be surrounded by this Kairos community that taught me how to love and what it means to fight. During the struggles its so important to remember the things that fill you with joy. Like jumping out of planes, sunset drives, screaming the wrong lyrics to songs, sunrises cuddles up to best friends or screaming after winning Wii Tennis. Those are my perfect days. That's when I'm living life to the fullest.

Carry the people that inspire you in your heart, carry god in your soul and you will always make it through. Living the fourth doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. It has a fluid and continuously changing meaning. My fourth day reflects my life, it's a fight. But also what I've learned is that to live the fourth it means to live. Live each and every day and feel all the feelings you can. The sad, the anger, the joy, love. To Love the people around you immensely, life is so uncertain. To live each day to the fullest. To Live the fourth.