My kind of party involves ginger beer and snuggling under blankets to watch a movie.

This party involved drinking games, very intoxicated people, startlingly immodest dresses and smoking pot.

I started off the evening by demurely sitting at a table watching events unfold. Then I felt I should do something with my hands so I found myself some orange juice, which I suspiciously sniffed for unknown substances after making the mistake of leaving it on a table unsupervised.

After observing the standard of dance moves on the floor I felt I could join without looking too uncoordinated, but soon enough I had run out of enthusiasm for bopping with the odd hand flick and knee crouch so wandered outside with a friend, trustworthy orange juice in hand.

A lovely lady, slightly intoxicated, was having an odd conversation nearby with a young person. "You'll get the good stuff from him?"

I thought they were going to retrieve cigarettes from a very nice young man, but since I was asked whether I wanted to join this mum in smoking pot, I guess not.

My 18 year old friend took one look at the flabbergasted expression on my face and laughed. "What, are you surprised?" I couldn't say anything as a third of the party left the main hall and joined the dark corner of the car park.

Teenagers, parents, teachers, students - all united in the shared experience of getting high.

Where does a Catholic girl fit into this scene? And an introverted one, at that.

The noise on top of everything was too much. I grabbed my jersey and went for a walk down the road. I prayed. I looked at the stars. I drank my orange juice. I asked God whether I could go home given how alien I felt.

‘Not yet,' He whispered. ‘Go back inside to your friends, you're safe with them.' I turned to walk inside and instead two of my younger friends, 16 and 18, came whooping and hollering across the car park and out to the road. ‘Jess, are you okay!' they yelled cheerfully.

I couldn't help but smile at their antics as they lay in the middle of the road and acted drunk despite being totally sober. These girls knew how to have a good time without any help. Continue reading

• Jessica Claire studied Music Performance at the University of Canterbury and works as both a model and photographer.

People agonising over healthcare, fretting about unemployment, troubled by tuition payments, mortgage payments, car payments or other costs.

So many people, it seems, are labouring to be at peace, groping for stable ground, living for the weekends.

So many people, even those with health and wealth, straining to be joyful and satisfied, seeing life not as a gift but as a series of unfair demands.

It seems that we've forgotten one crucial thing: Hardship is not the point of life. Stress is not our purpose.

We were not given this incomprehensible, stupendously amazing gift of being alive to spend it negotiating a ceaseless angst.

We are not here to carry on with an anxiety that turns us to addiction, pettiness, self-loathing and, ultimately, captivity.

Of course, we must not ignore suffering. Pain is not an illusion. Grief is real. Worry will wake us.

But pain and suffering are byproducts of being alive, not the point of it. We might struggle to live; we do not live to struggle.

We were not given life as a punishment, but as an expression of an infinite love. Remember: "God saw that it was good." Continue reading.

Matt Emerson is an educator and lawyer, who blogs daily for America magazine.

Source: Matt Emerson

Image: Vera in August