. . . when the Doctor was me.

Fun fact:  When you spend eleven hours alone in a car, you run out of things to do and start either falling asleep or thinking.  In order to prevent a horrifying fiery car accident, last weekend, I succumbed to the latter.

Once I got past the stuff that was WAY too personal for me to be sharing with almost anyone and the classified stuff I'm too paranoid to post on the interwebs, I got into an exceedingly nerdy analysis of the most recent seasons of Doctor Who.  (Stay with me, and I promise I'll get past the nerdiness as quick as possible.)(For those that care, I'll only talk about one spoiler that anyone who has paid ANY attention to Doctor Who information online already knows about.  Hint:  Peter Capaldi.)

For the last several years, the show runner for the series has been a brilliant writer:  Steven Moffat.  In his tenure of the show, Moffat has demonstrated a brilliant mastery of the show's time-travel aspect.  He seems to understand better than most who have written for the show before what the doctor was saying here:

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey . . . Stuff

He set plot lines in motion that seemed to come out of nowhere and then disappeared just as quickly.  Then, just when you think that you're supposed to forget that . . . BAM!  It's an incredibly important plot point!  So many of these threads were wrapped up and tied together in the most recent episode, "The Time of the Doctor", that it took me a few weeks of percolation to finally riddle through all the timey wimey stuff.  Once I did that, however, I was able to finally think about what the doctor left us with in the end of the episode.

For those of you who don't know, the entire premise of Doctor Who is that there is an alien time traveler called "the Doctor" (we don't know his actual name).  He is from a race known as the Time Lords who have evolved an odd way of cheating death.  Instead of dying at the end of their life (whether that be naturally or otherwise), they "regenerate".  Essentially, every cell in their body is replaced, leaving them a completely different looking person with a completely different personality, but all the same memories.  This is actually just a clever writing trick that lets the character be replaced by a new actor with a new personality whenever needed.

At the end of the episode, the Doctor gives a speech that went far beyond the reaches of a simple sci-fi show:

The Eleventh Doctor's Regeneration

For those too lazy to have actually watched that video, shame on you.  I'll spoon-feed you the speech later, but you really should go watch it.  Matt Smith is incredible!  Just ignore the other people . . . on second thought, don't ignore them.  They're definitely worth paying attention to . . . for a different reason.  Definitely.

I'm in the middle of a regeneration myself.  At the tender age of five, I went to camp, and I fell in love.  As I've grown up and discovered and rediscovered myself, going through regeneration after regeneration, camp has been a constant.  After my sophomore year of high school, I entered into the Lutheran Youth Leadership Experience (or LYLE) program at camp.  I went through two year in that program, making new friends and getting to know a new me.

At the end of my second year of LYLE, I was convinced that I was done with camp.  I was sure that I was never going back.  When God smacked me over the head at one of the last worships, that changed, and I set my course as a member of camp staff for the next four summers.

They were a glorious four summers and during that time, regardless of what else changed in my life, I knew that I was camp staff.  I knew I would be back.  To be completely honest, I began defining myself by the relationships I made at camp as far back as LYLE.  For six years, my identity was tied up with camp.  But, as the Doctor pointed out, "You've got to keep moving."

For those of you who are currently summer staff, a day will come when you will know that it is your time to move on.  One day, you will realize that your regeneration is coming.  For some, it happens during staff training of their first summer.  For others, it's seven years down the road.  And for some lucky people, it could be decades.  But when the time comes, you know.  I knew by the time I was interviewing for my last summer.

Unfortunately, it didn't truly hit me until last weekend.

I got through the end of the summer with only a minor breakdown.  I honestly thought that I had gotten through it and was incredibly relieved by how easy it had been.  I was sure that because I had gone through the entire summer knowing it was my last one, it had prepared me to move on.  Then the second night of the annual staff reunion rolled around.

I looked around the room at all of the people there that I love so dearly.  My other family.  I watched new relationships forming and old ones solidified over coloring books, games, and YouTube videos.  I listened to the noise level slowly rise until someone shushed everyone and reminded them that people were trying to sleep.  Then I listened to it go right back up again.

I remembered all the long, pointless and hilarious conversations I had had and all the long, incredibly meaningful conversations that changed me forever.  I remembered demon turtles, my twin sister, those select few who got to peak behind the mask, and conversations in languages none of us understood.  I remembered the Joker, the Nookie, and King Arthur.  I remembered velociraptors, creampuffs, elephants wearing hats, and the Victorian era lyrics to Big Poppa.

I thought about all the people who had already moved on.  The truly great people who had graced those hallowed halls with their presence.  I saw their faces among those still looking forward to the next summer and I realized, probably for the first time, that I was, in some strange way, no longer one of them.  I realized at that moment that when I left there the next day, it would be the last thing I ever do as a summer staff member.

And I wept.

I was lucky enough that someone else was there who was dealing with the same thing, and my adopted brother comforted me.  We hid ourselves away and talked until I could breath and felt like I could go back.  It helped immensely, especially for that night, but it didn't completely fix it.  I cried several times on the ride home and am, in fact, in tears as I'm writing this.

Someone once told me that once you are camp staff, you are always camp staff.  I haven't been on the other side of this long enough to know how true those words are, but it really doesn't matter.  That period of my life is over.  Yes.  That will always be me, but I don't really want to have to be dragged out.

Matt Smith was not the first Doctor.  He wasn't the second, third, or even eighth.  He was the eleventh Doctor.  I'll be honest and admit that I haven't watched any of classic Doctor Who, so I don't know what kind of emotions they attributed to regeneration back then, but I have seen the last three regenerations.  Christopher Eccleston (the ninth Doctor), I felt, had one very similar to Matt Smith's.  Both of their Doctor's knew their time had come and gracefully bowed out.  David Tennant (the tenth Doctor), on the other hand, had a vastly different one.  He dragged his feet, revisited all of his previous companions, then ended with this heartbreaking scene:

The Tenth Doctor's Regeneration

In the interest of full disclosure, I am in full support of the way Tennant's doctor went out.  It was completely in character and a fitting way to send out a Doctor who, as the eleventh put it, had "vanity issues".  But I don't want to do that.

It's true.  I don't want to go.  But I know that any day now, he's a-comin'.  I'm not saying goodbye to camp.  I'm not about to break a streak as long as I've got going by not going back at some point this summer.  But I am saying goodbye to that me.  It's someone else's turn to take on the role.

We all change.  We all go through regenerations.  We are all constantly recreating and rediscovering ourselves.  To those of you who are in the middle of your tenure as yourself, cherish this time.  There will never be another you like you.  To those in the middle of changing themselves, have hope.  Just because things change, it doesn't mean that they'll be bad.  But above all, never EVER forget all of the yous that came before you.

It all just disappears, doesn't it?  Everything you are, gone in a moment.  Like breath on a mirror.  Any moment now, he's a-comin'.  The Doctor.  I am the Doctor, and I always will be.  But times change, and so must I.  We all change when you think about it.  We are all different people all through our lives, and that's ok.  That's good.  You've got to keep moving.  So long as you remember all the people that you used to be.

I will not forget one line of this, not one day.  I swear.  I will always remember when the Doctor was me.