File Under: things we don't tell the kids and let them figure out on their own.

I had this moment a few weeks ago sitting at my desk: Shoes kicked off, knees pulled up to my chest, ankles crossed beneath me, gripping a lipstick-stained mug of coffee to nurse my mini-hangover, the result of my body unfortunately telling me, though I am young, am an not as young as I used to be. I had swaddled myself in my oversized white sweater, complete with elbow patches, and my hair was tied back in a messy pony and I had my glasses positioned on the bridge of my nose just so I only looked through them when glancing down at the manuscript I was proofreading for edits. And as I continued my work, a slow smile began to spread across my face. I don't think I have ever felt more content in a moment. I thought to myself, "I am so sad that I don't get to come back to this desk until Wednesday, and I cannot believe this job is not what everyone on this Earth wants to do for the rest of their lives," which is a little dramatic, but still. That's how I felt, and I couldn't quite place my finger on the emotion.  

Ever since being back from Edinburgh, I've been struggling to define the term 'home' for myself. I know it can be a place, but to me it is not. I know it can be a person, but to me it is not. And for a very long time I was at a loss as to what it was.

There's this feeling that I get when I come home from a long day: when the lights are all dark and the glow of my alarm clock makes me miss my childhood nightlight and crawling into my empty bed feels just a little too lonely. It is in these moments that I lay still, close my eyes, and listen. Through the thin walls of my overpriced city apartment I can hear the faint snores of my roommates, and a little bit of that fear washes away. Just their presence give me a sense of security: an emotional TUMS for my soul when I've climbed that far inside my own head, it comforts me like a hug from my mother. I have tried for months to put into words the gratitude and love that I have for the intelligent, strong, driven women I live with and each time I try, I fail. I have never known a love so visceral that was not cast in blood.

But it finally hit me today, that the reason I could not define what I was feeling, and the reason there was a continuous struggle to define home, was because they were each other's definition, just unconventionally. I created a new feeling. I'm calling it home. I feel home. Not the noun, it's nothing tangible, but the adjective. The emotion. I feel home. (On the off chance that anyone besides my sister gets this reference- it's like when the janitor in Scrubs feels "mop." He feels mop, I feel home, and the laugh track plays happily.) 

I'm not sure if I've ever written about this, but I have thought about it for countless hours. Whenever I am happy, really happy, I spoil the feeling for myself. All I can think about is how ephemeral that moment is. Especially at this point in my life, everything has a foreseeable end. I become nostalgic for a moment that has not yet passed. This happened at the end of sophomore year, then again before going abroad, then again while abroad. I was pretty caught up in my own bubble of unhappiness and uncertainties last semester to experience that same feeling, but then summer came.

It's nice when life is cyclical in a good way. The lows end, friendships become closer again, financial security seems probable once more, etc. But this feeling followed such a close pattern, that when I came back from my short break at home, I was already anticipating the anticipation of the end. I had a great internship, I lived with my best friends, I had my car in DC: I was going to have a great summer and I was dreading the end before it even began. Do I sound crazy yet? I'm a little crazy. There's a point to this, I promise.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was convinced that I would be spending my collegiate years in Boston studying journalism and having the goddamn time of my life. When I toured Boston University, I fell in love. It was my first college tour and I was impressionable and had no idea what I wanted out of a university except for it to be nothing like the one my parents and sister all attended (can you say #teenageangst) so BU seemed like a good deal. But looking back nearly six years later, there is only one thing that I can remember about BU, and it virtually has nothing to do with the university itself. I picked up a magazine in the School of Communications, which must have been their literary magazine or something similar. It was the December 2011 issue, and I flipped to a random page. On this page was a personal essay written by a Junior journalism student. It was essentially a love letter to her roommates, in which she thanked them for shaping her into the person she had become, for all the nights they stayed up late, or held her hair, or made her soup when she was sick, or brought her books to campus, or any number of countless things good friends do for each other.  I don't even remember really what she said. But she said it with such affection, with so much warmth in her words, that when I finished reading that essay all I wanted to do was crawl onto the couch in her apartment, wrap myself in the love that lived that, and gaze out of her twinkle-light lined windows at the Citco sign instead of studying for finals (ok turns out I remember a little bit of what she said). And since I knew I couldn't do that, I settled for wishing desperately that when I finally went to college, I, too, would find home in a feeling.

It isn't just my room and my apartment being the coziest of spaces. It isn't just my best friends sleeping a door or two away. It isn't just a rewarding job that I'm passionate about, or having a solid career plan, or a *bangin'* hair cut. It's all of it together in an insanely powerful way- so powerful that it has broken the cycle. For the first time in almost two years, I am not afraid of the good things ending. I'm not nostalgic for this moment yet because I'm l i v i n g it.

If there's anything I've learned from the past six months, it's that home is neither a place nor person. Rather, it is a state of mind. And I've also learned that most things are just that: state of mind. And maybe, and this is highly possible though it pains me to admit it, this isn't really a revelation to most of you. Maybe all of my going ons about growing up and figuring life out aren't really news. Maybe they are just the inescapable truths of life filed away under the-things-we-don't-tell-the-kids-and-let-them-figure-out-on-their-own, with Santa and politics and the way to drink their coffee; things that can be taught, but in their teaching lose the value of the lesson to be learned. If you tell someone Santa the person is not real, they may grow to be suspicious of all the magic and wonder that graces the world, and if you teach someone to like their coffee black, they'll miss out on the indulgence of a vietnamese iced coffee or the comfort of a vanilla latte on a rainy September afternoon. And if you tell someone home is confined to where they are from or where they grew up, or confined to the person they love or the people they share their nightmares with over morning coffee, they will spend their whole life searching for that thing and for that feeling. They will spend their whole life failing to realize that the one common denominator throughout all of those people and places is themselves, and that so long as they themselves are living they can be home. 

The Way Things Change

I have always struggled with the passing of time. It is not something I enjoy. I think this started my sophomore year of high school, when Christmas stopped feeling like Christmas and started feeling like a compilation of memories of how Christmas used to be. I want time to pass slower. I don't want anything else, unless its a picture album, to feel like a compilation of memories. I never understood the rush to grow up, anyway. I like living in the moment, and when a moment inevitably passes, I tend to cling to it. It creates a weird sensation; a preemptive nostalgia. I felt this way as my sophomore year ended, as my summer of renting cars drew to a close. It's beginning to creep back in, even as just two months of being abroad slips by.  And usually this sense of nostalgia, this longing for a time that has not yet passed, makes me feel like my small little universe is spinning off its axis. I'm left grasping at a moment that slips away into the past, without me ever having a chance of holding it longer than it's given to me for. But right now? Right now my world feels slow. For the first time in years, I feel like I have the time to fully exploit every second of everyday. Time, instead of whizzing by, has become slow; slow like a lazy Sunday afternoon; slow like the flicker of a candle in a drafty old room; slow like the way we used to wake up on a snow day after our parents had snuck in and shut off our alarm.

First semester of my senior year, I was enrolled in my first ever writing class. It's funny, people always seem surprised when they learn I, The Lit Major, didn't take AP English or AP Lit. But if I had, I never would have been exposed to two of the most influential courses I've ever taken in my academic career. People don't realize you don't always need to choose the hardest path to get somewhere. You shouldn't shy away from a challenge, but do what feels right, and trust that the rest will fall into place. Not much in this world happens by chance, and that is something I firmly believe. Maktub. (If you haven't read the Alchemist, please do).

This course was designed to help us with our college essays, but I'd finished mine over the summer, because my mother is my mother and she loves me but hates how much I procrastinate. Bless her for putting up with me. Being done with my essay, however, just meant that I had more time to focus on the other assignments we were given. 

They were interesting, and unlike any prompts I had encountered before. I remember one in particular; we had to choose a song we associated with a memory, and write an essay about that memory and how the song tied in. On the day it was due, we each got to read our essay out to the class while our song played in the background. There is only one thing in this world I hate more than public speaking, and that's public speaking something personal I've written. 

It's only saving grace was that it incorporated music, which sometimes still feels like my only saving grace when the world gets overwhelming. But to talk about your favorite songs and why it is your favorite is to bare part of your soul, and I was about to do so in front my unreceptive high school peers.

This assignment was my hell. 

But despite what my study habits reflect, I've always been a good student and I definitely wasn't the type to blow off an assignment. So I wrote. And I wrote about a The Lumineers song called 'Slow It Down'. I'd made a lantern the previous year in my ceramics class with the lyric "Some love was made for the lights" engraved on it. I've never quite known why, but something about that song has always clung to me. That lantern is still one of my proudest accomplishments, and it's not even that good, but it just encapsulates me as a junior so completely: I look at it and I feel like I'm looking at a kiln-fired version of who I was four years ago. 

I chose 'Slow It Down' for reasons I still don't know, and I can't even really remember what I wrote about in that essay. It had to do with getting my license, with driving a lot and spending a lot of time thinking to the soundtrack of my Spotify. I think I found solace in the plea to slow 'it' down, 'it' being life. My senior year had rapidly come and would soon rapidly go, and I would once again be left reeling. 

It's funny, how cyclical life can be. If I were to be given the same assignment tomorrow, I would write about the same song. But instead of talking about driving and thinking, I would talk about writing about this song for a class three years ago, and how very different the meaning of slowing down has become.

***

My dad sent me a quote via email my freshman year, as my dad does, from the famous journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It read, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!'" This, also, I clung to, immediately adding it to the monstrous pile of virtual sticky notes I have saved on my laptop. I would think about it from time to time, ask myself if I was really living in a way that would produce this end result. But I realized I have a hard time measuring things in lifetimes, as I can barely function from minute to minute. 

As fate would have it, I stumbled upon a different quote that boiled this same concept down to the day to day: "And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling." I'm not sure who said this, but thank you Universe for them. 

I didn't realize that by attempting to adhere to living life by this advice, which seemingly tells us to live life a little harder, a little faster, with a little more daring -- I would actually succeed in, finally, slowing it down.

***

I have very few obligations here. Because of that, and because I am the Earth's largest slug-person, I didn't do a whole lot with my days after I settled in. And while it was relaxing at first to sit around and do nothing except troll Facebook and watch the shittiest movies I could find on Netflix,  it becomes very boring, very fast. I felt my brain melting, and a false sense of loneliness begin to set in.

I say false because I feel that too often people throw out the world lonely as a substitution for feeling uncomfortable being alone. But that is not what it means to be lonely. Lonely is the feeling of missing someone who you cannot reach, the feeling of longing for a person or a place that will never be again. Whether this is missing someone who has passed away, or missing the way someone once was, the way you two once were together, the time and place and self that this person represents. It's watching the show you always watched together, alone. It's seeing something that reminds you of them, but not being able to share it with them. But it is not the act of simply missing people you will soon again see, nor of simply being alone. 

I miss home, and I miss my friends, but I am not lonely. I'm not lonely because I have spent far too much of my time making sure that I have the friendship of the one person who will never be away from me: myself. I have never known great loss in my life, and for that I feel thankful. It has allowed me to be the wanderer that I've always been, and to do so with no need for anyone else. Everyday I evaluate what it is I need to do, what it is I want to do, and what it is I am actually going to do. The most time I spend by myself, the more I like my own company (and this is becoming dangerous because I've never been the type to lack confidence). I've been trying to focus on feeding my soul, which sounds cliche, because it is, but is also something very real and very important. I spend hours reading; the things I've been meaning to read, random things I pick up while wandering around, which I also spend hours doing. I write without purpose and without deadline and for no one but myself and with no purpose but to pass the time, which I can seemingly not run out of. I've learned that there is little better way to learn about the world and those in it than to simply watch them be. 

I'm in so little of a hurry, I've actually started arriving places on time. Yesterday I was even early. Me! Early! Has the Earth stopped spinning completely? 

I imagine this kind of existence isn't sustainable. Eventually I may grow tired of my own thoughts, or of taking the long way to get somewhere, or of working on my cursive (which I'm doing in hopes of someday having legible handwriting, because my print is a lost cause). These things may not sound outwardly adventurous, but there are two way to adventure: in the world, and of it. A physical adventure cannot be successful or nearly as rewarding without first daring to know yourself and your relation to the world that surrounds you. Again, The Alchemist, read it, I'm begging. 

Not unlike old times, I'm beginning to feel that dread of this semester ending and of going back to AU: of transitioning from 3 classes and 12 hours of sleep a night to 6 classes, a job, an internship (prayers are welcome), extracurriculars and sleeping 5 hours a night, optimistically. 

But I've consulted with myself, and we decided none of that matters. Because it's wishing away the future or holding too tightly to the present that sends the world wobbling on its axis. And I've made a promise that for at least the next two months I will take this beautiful wonderful life at the pace it sets for itself. I'll take it as fast at it will go or at a nice steady trot. Hell, I'll take it in freeze frame milliseconds if thats what will be. 

I'm embracing this time for the luxury it is, and I'm trying desperately not to look forward or back, but just to look around. Too many people are wishing away their abroad experience by enjoying themselves too much and dreading the end, or focusing on the negative too strongly and dreading every day that it drags on.

I'm doing neither.

For once, I'm taking it slow, in hopes that when this wild ride is over, my feet will be dirty, my hair messy, and my eyes remain sparkling for years and years to come.   

The Long Way Home - An Edinburgh Inspired Short Story // Long Vingnette

It had finally gotten cold, but only about three days ago, so she hadn’t yet been convinced this was actually the beginning of the U.K. winter she’d been warned about. She pulled her leather jacket around her a little tighter, and put as much of her hands as would fit in the small zipper pockets. She lived just on the outskirts of town, but she didn’t mind the walk. It gave her time to think, when she was in a thinking mood, which she most often was, and tonight. Most of the time she thought about her day, about her resolutions for the next (to leave her bed before noon, to be on time to class, to smile at a stranger, to write a bloody sentence, to not be a bumbling American idiot in front of the Sainsbury’s cashiers, etc.).

Sometimes she thought about her family, about how much she missed her Mom’s dinners and hugs and lists, in that order, and her Dad’s stories: the conviction in his voice whenever he told them. She caught herself from time to time, whenever she was reading out loud, trying to emulate the dips and dives, the sincerity in every syllable that she’d learned from him. She missed her sister, but over their years apart she’d become easier to miss. Not because she loved her less or missed her less, but because her heart had grown used to being physically separated from the person who understood her best.

Tonight, she was thinking about the city. She was thinking about the cobblestones under her feet. She was thinking about how much lovelier the streets would be if the trees were burning like they did back home. Nonetheless, she loved them.

It was this sense of singularity that catalyzed the process. She never loved anything before she left it. Or at least, she could never recognize it for the love that it was. But when she returned from a short weekend trip, just days ago as the cold was settling over the city, she felt a sense of returning to somewhere near to feeling like home. As she walked and reacquainted herself, she found she had missed the hills they liked to call streets (always uphill, remarkably). Her ears had grown accustomed to the cold; the frost had restored her to the former snow enthusiast she was, before DC winters eroded that version of herself away.

Once she let herself love bits and pieces, the rest came in a rush: The effortless combination of modern and medieval buildings; the way the sunshine scared away the cold as soon as it came out from behind the clouds; the way people could never make up their mind about which side of the sidewalk to walk on. This usually would drive her insane, but here she was just as confused as the rest of them and had come to love the little side step shuffle dance with strangers. They were always kind, shouting ‘cheers’ after her when they finally managed to brush past.  Even the homeless were extremely polite, despite if she could spare them any change. Plus, many of them had dogs. She liked the idea that a sense of companionship could make someone so many degrees warmer, even when they had many reasons (including the weather) to be cold.

“I need to buy a scarf”, she thought, if only to get the damn weather off her mind.

But the universe had different plans for that evening, and as she reached the Quartermile, it began to rain. She did love the rain, though there never had been a solution for her hair in such circumstances. Umbrella’s weren’t the answer, since the rain didn’t fall, but rather formed a ball of mist around her as she strode on.

As she did, she passed two other girls who hadn’t yet hung up their leather jackets for the season, and she felt better about holding out hope for a few more sunny late summer days, even as mid-October charged in head on at her full force.

She crossed the Meadows, noting for the millionth time (probably) that the scene from the Wizard of Oz with the scary apple trees could probably have been inspired by the very path she had to walk each night. She decided this place was a lot like Oz, everything either grand or green, as long as you substituted munchkins for folks on bikes.

She was nearing the end of the paved path now, preparing her ankles to take on the cobblestone in heels for the last time today. Her flat was only 3 more minutes’ walk, but she hadn’t quite finished her thinking for the night.  Unsure, really, of what she was thinking around, it didn’t much matter. She knew the moment she opened the door the fluorescent lights would scare away any ideas like flashlights in a bat cave.

She did love her flat. It had beautiful arches in the doorway, a meticulously tiled floor foyer and a smart vestibule that kept out that damned chill in the air. Her door was large and wooden, carved with care (and symmetrically, which was more important). It possessed a big golden 3 in the center, and a knocker beneath. The knocker was next to useless, because directly behind the door was a staircase that took you up two levels to the kitchen, and another two to the bedrooms. You wouldn’t be heard unless you buzzed up, and even then there was still a slight chance.

Anyway, it was this time of night that all her flat mates were home, buzzing about in preparation for their tomorrows’ as well. They were kind people. Well intentioned, respectful. She even considered one a friend. But it was nothing like coming home. Her room was her safe haven from the world, as it had been her whole life. But she liked open windows and open doors in her home. Leaving just the window open, without the neutralization of the hallway air, was proving to complicate the perfect balance between the biting wind and the burning (ancient) radiator that lined her eastern wall.

Behind that marvelous wooden door there were many good things: the first kitchen of her very own with left over mashed potatoes in the fridge; Magnum chocolate peanut butter ice cream bars in the freezer; a bottle of her favorite wine, unopened; in her room, her quilt, which remained as well traveled as she was, and freshly washed linens lay snugly tugged around her bed. But all the fresh blankets and ice cream in the world wouldn’t make up for what was lacking; the warm welcomes, the comfortable intimacy that comes with living with loved ones, family and friends alike. The sense of being home, on a smaller scale. Being so familiar with a person, you can identify who has come home by the sound of their footsteps or the jingle of their keys; knowing how their day has gone by the playlist that has begun to waft out from under their door.

And so, that’s what she finally found herself thinking about as she rounded the corner of her block. Gazing up to the second story, she caught shadows flickering in the candle light in the kitchen’s giant wooden windows (another thing she absolutely adored). But as she neared the gate, she kept her eyes steady on to the next building.

She thought she would go for a few more blocks, maybe find a few more scary apple trees to paint with burning browns in her mind. Putting a few more minutes of cobblestone under her feet, she held onto the well-nigh feeling of home they gave her. Maybe when she got back she would sit down and try to figure out her bloody radiator. Her room would be far too stuffy with both the door and window shut, which lately had been more and more frequently the case. If the cold really were settling in, it didn’t leave her much time to find that illusive balance.

       “Yes, that’s a good plan for tomorrow”, she thought. But tonight, she would take the long way home.

For Dust You Are And To Dust You Will Return

I've stayed quiet until now. I have the tendency to refrain from writing anything until I am very certain, in fear that I will regret my words and change my mind. I wait until I have sorted out my thoughts before I bring the pen to paper, the finger to the key: I need to be certain of my truth before I share it with the world.

But I'm left uncertain of everything I once believed to be true. I'm left shaken down to my very core; I no longer know how to move forward.

I spent all day Sunday curled into the fetal position in my bed, endlessly scrolling through my social media, trying to somehow convince myself it was real; that hate so strong could still beat in the pulse of American society. I couldn't wrap my head around the news, I still can't, honestly. I know you're going to say that is self-centered, imagine how the families of those directly affected feel, and you're right. 

But if I can confess to anything here, and this speaks volumes about the generation I am a part of, and the senseless violence we have grown up accustomed to, it's this: I've grown numb. From Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook to Santa Barbara and the countless shootings in between, I've become used to it. Mass shootings no longer shock me. Somedays they go hardly reported and possibly unnoticed, lost between tweets and finstagram posts and snap streaks and everything else. 

Sunday, for the first time since I can remember, the pain cut through this shell I've grown. As I lay there, unable to bring myself to do anything at all, silent tears fell from my eyes as I read article after article about the senselessness and violence that has left us here, in the wake of the deadliest massacre in American history, at the hands of someone who had hate in his heart for other human beings, other beating hearts, other blinking eyes and breathing chests. 

I've always considered myself an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, though I'm not sure I've always taken as much action as I could have. But equality was never a question in my mind: love is love, humans are humans, my air is no more important than yours. If there's anything I took away from my years of attending Catholic Mass it's that we are born from dust and to dust we shall return. All of us. This is fact. 

But I was never close to it. Issues this big were never capable of making me feel so small. I have always put my whole hearted trust in humanity, in goodness, in my faith that love and happiness and fairness will prevail, no matter how much evil challenges it along the way. I knew homophobia existed, but firmly believed that acceptance and support greatly outweighed this baseless and hateful belief. Now, I'm not so sure. 

4 months ago, the most proudly gay 5' nothing spitfire of a girl walked into my life and changed it for the better, forever. She has become someone I can count on, someone who counts on me, someone I laugh with, cry with, and can't wait to share memories with for the rest of my life. She's not just my little, but she's become one of my best friends. 

And I've never felt so helpless. How can there be people who wish her ill, this incredibly talented and smart person? How could you ever wish harm or death on anyone, let alone a person or AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE you don't even know? How is there nothing I can do to make this better? 

Worst of all, what can we do? What can I do to get through to these people? What can I say, write, preach, scream to get them to understand that humanity is qualified by nothing more than a beating heart? I've never felt more like a pinpoint on the universe, completely incapable of doing anything at all. I've never felt more uselessly singularly here, biding my time until the violence finally reaches me. 

Here in my safe, privileged bubble, I'm drowning. Every window I look out of, I see violence and bigotry and hate and ignorance that leads to more hate. I see a world I don't want to raise kids in. I see my future, but in this future everyone I love who isn't straight and white and Christian is suffering under the oppression that I try and try to lift from their shoulders, but never succeed. 

How much longer can we keep up the fight? How much more suffering must the citizenry, conscious and uncomfortable with the state of our nation, endure while we push for reform and Revolution and progress, before we're crushed under the weight of the world we are trying to advance forward? 

If the second amendment of the Constitution is so important, please let's review the very first sentence, and what it calls for: 

"We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Justice. Tranquility. General Welfare. Blessings of Liberty. 

Now show me what part of today's America represents that one; the one that the Founding Fathers poured their hearts and souls into forging for us. Now I may be a liberal, but I'm fairly certain if George Washington and Benjamin Franklin rose from their graves and saw that the only one of their values we still hold dear is the right to bear arms, they would willingly return deep, deep, deep into the Earth and never come back up for air. 

And so I wonder, will this ever end? Will we ever know America: Land of the free, home of the brave? Or will we remain forever America: land of bigotry, home of hate, flying a bullet-spangled banner perpetually at half mast in memory of lives that needn't be lost? 

I Desperately Want To Title This Anything Other Than "Little Moments".

Everywhere I look, people keep telling me to show up to write. Every book I read for class, every acquaintance I catch up with in passing, and every thought that flashes through my head. Somewhere between last December, when I first decided to do this on a whim in the foreign yet familiar Panera around the corner from my sister's Boston apartment, and now, I settled on only writing an entry when something momentous happened or when something felt over or learned or gained or gone.

I think this is because I don't know how to write about being happy. I've been waiting and waiting and biding my time until my life shatters, leaving me a million pieces and a lesson to write about. But, and don't get me wrong this is a good thing, the tragedy just doesn't seem like its coming anytime soon.

My life is full of little moments: small milliseconds in time that eventually build up to this person I have slowly and indelibly become. So while the big things, like the semester ending and turning 20 (and it being the best, most ordinary and cherished day of my life), and quitting the Odyssey and The Rival being my savior and all these things that seem like they deserve a post to them self have happened, and honestly probably do deserve attention of their own, I am deciding finally to move away from this life of big things.

After all, it is the tiny things that matter most to me. When I can make an Uber driver smile after his last customer yelled at him for the traffic he simply couldn't control, and when he makes me smile in return by thanking me for being a decent human being. When talking on the phone with my parents through a 3 mile walk in the cold makes everything just fine, including the loss of feeling in my toes, and the shattered computer screen slung over my shoulder. It's when waking up too early reminds me why I love winter mornings and finding the perfect gift for my sister's birthday reminds me what's important.

As much as I try, sometimes I feel like the only thing I'm grounded in is my own unreality. This perfect bubble of friendship and happiness and financial instability that is mostly fake (because I still have a roof over my head and meal swipes to spend) leaves me blissful most days and guilty the rest. And the days when I'm guilty, the voice inside my head urges me to show up to write even more.

My dad sent me an e-mail last semester that hit home pretty hard; so much so that it both urges me on everyday and stalls my thoughts before they have the chance to strike a key. It essentially told me not to waste this thing I have. That holds a lot of weight to me. The inner monologue I keep with myself is apparently a big hit amongst you all, if you've stayed with me this far. Which is fine and great and I sincerely appreciate the support.

So here's the thing that terrifies me. Here's the thing that makes this really hard. I'm still young, and I'm still dreaming. I tell everyone I want to be a book editor, and I seriously do, but I would be lying to myself and everyone else if I didn't say my first dream is to write. And to do so well, and to make an impact, and, optimistically, do it for a living. But what happens when I publish this and expectations are set, and I don't meet them and then to everyone I've ever known I'm just the wannabe who never made it? This isn't the life for me. I don't handle failure well. Even when I am failing, I am succeeding by turning it into a funny story or a story of perseverance at the very least.

One of my fondest memories, and I'm sure you'll all question my sanity once you're done hearing this, it of my 18th birthday when my family made me cry in the middle of my favorite Italian restaurant. The conversation started with the whole 'you're an adult now' celebratory few sentences and ended with 'what are your goals? Plans for the future?'

Those of you who only met me in college have to understand the emotional and vulnerable person I now am grew out of this exact moment. I used to be the angsty high schooler who spent her days on Tumblr. I didn't really talk about my emotions or goals or life. I was just kind of there, living my day to day life. It was in that moment when my parents and sister sat there, staring at me, I burst into tears. Because not only did I feel the pressure of answering them, but how sad it was that the three people closest to me in this world did not know what I dreamed of accomplishing in my time here. That was the moment in which I decided to write, to open myself up not only to my own self, but to be vulnerable for the first time and let the world see what runs through my head.

Born from that moment is, fundamentally, the person I define myself as today. But that person is ever-changing, despite the big moments. They really don't mean that much anymore, those moments, simple markers that indicate time is passing, far too rapidly, and that I need to show up and write about the mundane, the day to day. Because after all, if I show up to live the little moments and write about them later, I think I could possibly keep this fleeting perfect sphere of happiness in my grasp just a little longer.

So take this as my vow. This post, inspired by a little moment. Take this as my vow to show up and write about the little things, the ones that leave me walking the quad with a smile in my heart and glimmer in my eye. Take this sentence as my promise that I will break that vow, but I will do my very very best.  In return, I ask that you answer me this.

Are you content, in this very moment?

I have $16.34 to my name. I have a shattered computer screen, an unbalanced diet, a deep affection for Barefoot Pink Moscato, a slight caffeine dependency. I have an urge to write, something that every parent prays their kid will never realize (in fears of a life spent pursuing art and racking up the credit card bills). But I'm happy. Freshii has had quinoa the past two times I've eaten there and my laundry is a greater percent clean than dirty. It's Birks season! And I've finally mastered the all-nighter formula! I have a best friend who could fill the trope in every bad rom-com that left you envious when you were a kid, good people around me who give nothing but support and love, and the cutest damn cat in the world to go home to.

I have the little moments, and I'm happy with those.

Roots

There’s stuff I learned this summer that I could probably spend a few paragraphs talking about, but at this point I’ve forgotten all about Enterprise and moved on to the other issues this summer presented. The most important being my first broken heart. 

     My first broken heart did not derive in the way most do, because I have never been and do not plan on being in love anytime soon (Problem #1: Boys are a tricky creature and Problem #2: Vulnerability just doesn’t sound like something I would be into). My first broken heart accompanied my realization that my childhood best friends and I have fallen out of best friendship.  It hit me in the shower one morning, after the last night I slept over at Carrie’s. Something felt off the whole time, but nothing was out of place. A cloud of nostalgia was engulfing my conscious and I was loosing my ability to think clearly about my life, as I do when I think too hard, too much, and too often. I was in the shower when it hit me, and I’ve never sobbed harder in my life.

     There is something so fragile about friendships. In the way that they are strong and hard and undeniably reliable, they are also built on trust and time and hope that when we say forever, we mean it. Mine were built on pre-k rugs, on performance hall stages, and on softball diamonds. And after a while, they were built merely on the years that had come before. But I’ve learned that mutual experiences are only strong enough to seal a bond when they remain the only experiences. An air-tight sort of ordeal.

     I thought nothing could weaken a 14-year friendship. I genuinely thought that we would four-way Skype everyday and text each other everything and meet all each other’s new friends. That’s on me. Somewhere in the middle of new friends and frat basements or between college course work and a part-time job, I lost touch. I hardly called home and I never texted. I don’t even know my Skype password anymore. We grew apart, and I for that I take full responsibility.    

     But as we grew apart, we grew up and we grew into the people we are supposed to be. We found the new people who will break our hearts as we leave them for the next stage of our life. Perhaps we have found the city we will call home for the rest of our life, or we have developed a passion for something we never saw before. It doesn’t matter in which way this growth took us, it just matters that we have grown.  Up and away from the roots that once bound us so close together, we couldn’t see the world we don’t all share rapidly approaching.

      It’s natural. It’s totally natural that we have grown apart and become close with the people we see and talk to everyday. The people we live with. The people who we now have shared experiences with. These are the people who we will introduce our parents to and the ones we will list as our emergency contacts in the years to come. But as much as these people have learned about me, they will never know baby Brenna. They will never begin to understand what I miss so deeply about home. They’ll never watch the sunset at Thatcher or understand just how amazing of a teacher Mr. Guilfoyle was. They will never know the back roads of my neighborhood, and they will never sit on the Middle School lawn on a Saturday morning while we eat blueberry scones and breakfast sandwiches.

     More than the what, it's the who that made me who I am. When I replay the memory reel in my head, they are always there with me. From my earliest memories of dance and softball to the moments before the van drove away for DC. 

     I can single out specific traits and behaviors that I inherited from my parents, specific ways I view the world because my sister viewed them first, the ways in which my college friends have influenced me, even the things that friends I met in high school managed to rub off on me. I cannot identify these things as a result of my childhood best friends. That is how engrained they are in me. We ‘ve been inseparable since I was four, and as a result the ways in which they influenced me are inseparable from the things I find innately my own.  I know for a fact that I would not be who I am today if I did not grow up with those three girls.

     Roots run deep. I am not ignorant of this. But trunks grow pretty damn tall, too. We are not the same, and we will never be the same as we were when our whole world was our little hometown. 

     So we’ve grown apart. We have come into our own and left our high school selves to settle in dust within the yearbook pages. And I don’t know how to end this, because I don’t want it to seem like an ending. I want it to seem like an acceptance. Because I can’t be the only one who felt that heavy pressure, and I can’t be the only one who has been struggling to make sense of the crushing feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I can’t be the only one who misses the people we used to be while simultaneously loving who we have become. This is me coming to terms with the death of a friendship and a life as I knew it, and becoming comfortable with what that means for us moving forward. With me knowing that we may not speak for weeks, even months, at a time. With me knowing that there is someone else in your life who makes you laugh with their ridiculous antics, who listens to Lady Antebellum with you when you’re sad, and who engages you in heated political debates.  And respectfully forces you to listen to her new playlist in the car. That makes it sound like a breakup, but I know it’s not. Because part of me coming to terms with this new kind of long distance, is me knowing that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I will always have you three in my heart. Because roots run deep, and ours are forever intertwined. 

Change Over Time

     I like my hometown. I really do, I swear. I'm just not overly attached to it. You would think I would be. No place else had ever been home until I went away to school, but no. For as long as I can remember I had sworn off being one of those people who comes back after college. I have no good reason except that I decided it once and it's just never really appealed to me to prolong my time here.  I've slept in the same twin-size been since I outgrew my crib, I've driven along the same roads from my car seat years until I was the one behind the wheel. I could draw you a map of where everything is in Wal-Mart and Hannaford, and let you know which Dunkin is the fastest en route from one end of town to the other. I used to know everything about this place like the back of my hand.
      Spending a year away has made evident just how quickly things can change. There's at least 5 new stores in the mall that I didn't know about. They're building a Taco Bell across from Wendy's and there's a weird elevated square in the middle of the Marshall's parking lot. The library, my library, doesn't use stamp cards anymore for return dates. They switched to receipts - receipts! I was raised on stamp cards. I used to look at the due dates that preceded mine and try to make up stories as to why the person 3 before me returned the book so fast it could be taken out two days later. Was it good? Was it terrible? Did they have to suddenly leave the country? Where did they flee to? What was their crime? It was a fun game. Anyway. Change doesn't bother me. Change is healthy.  It's a sign of life; pulsating progress that moves us to where we should be. I'm all for it. What does bother me is what I didn't realize until I came back: the fact that it can do so without me here.
        When we leave a place, we hold it in our minds as our fondest memories depict it. Our memories don't show us the life that remains here as ours continue elsewhere. We expect that when we return, things will be just as we left them. We don't imagine our most influential teachers have found new pupils to mold. We don't think about how our parents might have settled into a quiet routine that is blissfully free of our shoes in the middle of the kitchen and our dirty dishes in the sink. I never fathomed that the place I hold dearest, the place that has built a rough foundation for the person I have become, would substitute the thick, ink filled manilla slips that provide so much character with flimsy little paper receipts destined for the nearest recycling bin. I was raised here. It's the only world I have ever known. It's my world. My streets, my stores, my high school, my mall, my thruway exit, my neighborhood. All mine.
   
     It is equal parts hurtful and humbling to realize that the people and places so integral to my childhood can carry on so successfully in my absence. I am not this town's world, though it may once have been mine. I'm just another car, another girl, another heartbeat who contributes to the pulsating progress every time she drives away.