The First Year

      It's impossible to know how you have changed without a means of comparison. I mean, you can feel it within yourself, but it cannot be outwardly expressed. You can say you've matured, that you are an adult, that you are more responsible, but in the end it is our actions that determine whether or not this is true.
      I'm a pretty careless driver. I have been since October 1st, 2013 - the day I got my license and discovered freedom. There is no feeling that compares to the first time you drive without a parent or legal driver over the age of 21 in the passenger seat next to you. You are totally in control. You pick the music, the volume, the speed, the direction. All of the power is in your hands. At 16, this realization is the most exciting thing since push-up bras. At 19, it's utterly daunting.
       I've been stewing and thinking and starting and stopping trying to figure out how I am going to articulate to the world what my first year of college was: it took me going on an ice cream run to Stewart's last night to understand for myself.  My first year of college was the slow destruction of my lead foot.  And man did I ever have a lead foot. I never sped intentionally, but I was just prone to putting a little too much pressure on the pedal. Like I said, lead foot. But yesterday I was driving home, a half gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream riding shot gun, when I got to the hill before my house that I rarely, if ever, drove the speed limit on in high school. It's a HUGE hill, can you blame me?  Usually about half way down I give a quick glance to the speedometer just to make sure I'm not breaking any records or leaving skid marks behind me, and when I did, I was surprised to find that I was going the speed limit. Even more surprised to realize this is not the first time I have noticed this since being home. And then all the fragments of this past year that I have saved as drafts and half written stories came together. This past year had changed something so close to my core that I no longer have a lead foot. Me, lead-footless! It made me less reckless, it gave me goals, it tore down my walls and taught me to communicate with the people I love. It taught me to register the fact that I love people, and they, me.
      This past year grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and forced me to grow up. From the very first night, when my roommate and I awkwardly approached two other girls and gently bullied them into being our friends by making them share their frisbee full of home fries with us because I thought I was going to be friendless, to the first week when I had to get a job all on my own without any connections or references, to the third month when I missed my parents so much it made my gut hurt and I teared up nearly every time I talked to them. I learned that I owe every part of me who ever did anything right and well to them, and that I take them far too for granted. But I never wanted to be the girl that was homesick, and I wasn't homesick - I've never been homesick. My home is where the people I love are. It's hard to miss a place that is scattered across the country, occasionally the world.  Life is about people. This I have learned.
       I found my people this year. I found them asleep four feet away from me, at midnight breakfasts, in elevators, in t-shirts of my favorite bands, in coffee shops, in recruitment shirts, and on the streets of Tenleytown at 3am. These are the people that I surround myself with, every waking moment. These are the people I so badly did not want to leave two weeks ago. They are the reason I will go back.
       They make me laugh until I cry, they know my coffee order, they laugh at my bad jokes, they accept me for my lack of cleanliness and my inability to care for dairy products. They have assessed the severity of my financial incompetence and chosen to keep me around any way. They give me hell and make me want to tear my eyelashes off sometimes, but they make me rational and real. They pull me out of my head: they make me a better person. They give me a reason to go the speed limit.
      When it hit me this year that all of the power was in my hands, I was far less excited than I was three years ago. I wanted to crawl into a hole, burn all documentation that said I was over 18, and call my parents. But at some point I registered a fact that I had always known; there were people in this world, people in my classes, who had been making their own adult decisions since they were 14, some younger. I knew that if they were fine, I would be too.  I saw that I had all the tools I needed to be responsible, I just had to put them into effect. I looked around at my people, how out of sync I had fallen, how off balance I felt. I pulled myself together, pulled my GPA back to it's minimum requirement, and pulled myself back to the center.
        After my first semester, I was too comfortable. I was so confident and so, so happy. I thought that I had found myself, so I didn't need to look anywhere else. Turns out the only place I was looking up my ass, because that's where my head was. It is important to be happy with yourself, and I still am so happy believe me, but life is about people. This is the thing that really forced me to grow up. Life is about people. The people who matter, the ones I don't want to lose. It's about my parents-  living a life that will have my mom telling all her friends about my latest news and doing so in a way that will make my dad proud, in that better-when-it's-hand-written-than-said kind of way. I need to work hard so that I can make enough money to buy my sister the boat I promised her so we can actually spend quality time together as adults (or fake adults because we're never growing up, right?). It's about the friends who stand by while you flounder a bit, but accept you right back when you think you've figured it all out again. If you have anyone, or anything at all that keeps you grounded, don't you dare take it for granted.
   
       Life is about the people who reach deep into your core, and over the course of a few months, a year, a lifetime, chip and corrode and corrupt and deteriorate and destroy your inherent lead foot. My first year of college not only taught me this, but to let them.    
   
   

An Adventurer's Soul

So I submitted a piece to a small annual magazine that has to do with a small lake in Northern New York-- and it's being published! It's not a huge deal because it's a very small publication but I'm very excited and I wanted to share my piece. So here it is:

An Adventurer’s Soul

By Brenna Raffe

The first time I read The Boxcar Children I was in 1^st grade. While everyone else was reading Henry and Mudge and swinging on the tire swing, I was falling madly in love with the idea of living in the woods; of using a nook behind a waterfall as a refrigerator and of cooking dinner on the open fire. And now here I am; living in a city, surrounded by cars and people, where the closest thing to ‘getting back to nature’ I can come is walking the unattended, overgrown pathway that cuts between some apartment buildings. This is where I’ve found myself. Sometimes I feel trapped and sometimes I think if I got any happier my heart might burst. Everything is fleeting.  This, I think, is the burden of longing for adventure.

I’ve never been sure if an adventurer’s soul is born or made, but either way, I’ve always know I have one. Having been born and raised in the same not-that-small-but-small-enough suburban hometown, I never doubted for a moment that there was something greater beyond those town lines, state lines, or even country borders. I crave discovery. But it never used to be for anything overly grand like it is now. It used to be for the simple discovery of the island in the middle of the lake that seemed impossibly far away or the desire to save an earthworm from its impeding doom on the asphalt road; to climb a boulder twice my height and see for miles or to walk out to where the water drops off all by myself.

            As far back as I can remember my family has spent time each summer at Uncle Joe and Aunt Sue’s lake house. It’s more of a cabin, really. Forest colored and lined in full with wood paneling that reverberates the joyous noise of reunion, of family, of summer, of lives being lived. It’s got a bona fide residential attic that stored most of our duffle bags, complete with guest rooms separated by hanging sheets. We ate most of our meals on the screened in porch, listening to the loons call to each other and taking in the view.  Inside, there’s a chill that the fireplace can never quite beat, and a hammock stung up between two pines paralleling the drive.  It sits on hill that once seemed like a mountain and if you let your legs succumb to gravity when you ran down it, there’s just enough lawn to stop before the road. My sister and I used to race down it.* We used to do a lot of things together at the lake. We still do a lot of things together. But as all the kids got older, our time became limited. Weekends were spent on basketball courts and in hotel rooms rather than in the water and around a campfire.

            In those weekends, before time became a commodity highly sought after, I discovered my adventurer’s soul. I found her in the dirt we used to play in and the holes we used to dig in the sand; I found her while we watched the night become illuminated by the ring of bon fires on the 4^th.  She was there as I fell asleep in my dad’s arms watching the fireworks, willing myself not to be scared by the loud booms, but to take comfort in the arms wrapped around me and the way the reverberations kind of made my ribs tickle instead. I found her at the camp store under the lift lid freezer right next to the ice cream and on the road next to me the first time I got to walk down the road and over the bridge without the adults. I found her rocking me in the hammock so hard it flipped over and pushing me the final way on our hike up to the fire tower, straining for the view and the sense of accomplishment. I found her on the boat ride to the island, giddy to explore something new. She hid in between the sparse pines and all around the moss-covered boulders I so boldly used as my playground. She became the voice inside me that, even when my mother told me to be careful, that what I was doing was dangerous, let’s me know I’ll be ok in the end. She taught me to trust myself more than anyone else. In my short 19 years, she’s become my best friend, my most trusted advisor, and often times the one who pushes me to go for whatever crazy plan I’ve conjured up.  She’s the reason I’ve written this, the reason I write at all.

            So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you Canada Lake for giving the loons a place to live and me a place to wander. Thank you for being a community of adventurer’s souls and fostering one in me. Thank you for giving me somewhere to run wild and free and giving me a sense of what coming together really looks like. Thank you for being the backdrop to reunions that proved strong friendships can’t be broken and for teaching me thunderstorms are breathtakingly beautiful rather than ferocious and frightening. Thank you for the inspiration for the setting of the novel I may never write. Thank you for the ice cream. But most importantly, thank you for the memories. If I ever get so fed up with the world enough to fulfill my childhood fantasy of living in an abandoned boxcar, look for me first on the island. There’s no place I’d rather be. 

                       

* At least I think we did. She says I make up most of my memories. I think my soul knew I wanted to be a writer before my mind did, and it did me a favor and filed away the small, seemingly inconsequential moments so I would have them to write about later.

Silver and Gold

      Friendship can't be define in words. Have you ever tried? It's cliche and stupid and does no one any good ever. Friendship is defined in moments:  It's when Anna and I wake up at the same time on Saturday mornings and one of us climbs into bed with the other and we go from talking about last nights adventures to our friends from home and the times we stay up until 3am trying to explain to each other the shit show that is our extended families.  It's when Adena and I fall into deep conversation about literally anything, anywhere, and somehow always manage to see eye to eye. It's when Greta is having a bad day and really wants cupcakes and even though Emily can't bake for shit, she makes them anyway.  And when Greta let's me crash her solo Dav parties literally all the time because for some inexplicable reason we're both drawn there and even when she's not having a good morning she'll let me sit with her and be weird and loud and probably annoying and she'll even give me pasta later just because.  Leave it to Emily to be the one that let's me be actually straight up mean to her, but gives it right back because we're the sarcastic ones and that's what we do and it's why we love each other.  It's that one night in the beginning of the year when Ben drunkenly told me that he can see us being friends for a long time and how he trusts me with so much and it's really reassuring because I sometimes think I might not actually be as substantial as my mind likes to pretend I am and it's when Jonas will sing country songs way too loud, way too late with me because it's fun and we can and it will piss everyone else off and that's fun too sometimes.  It's when I have a near mental break down because my parents won't answer their phones or texts and I call Emma and she gets out of bed and drives to my house to see if they're there and talks to me the whole time trying not to let me ruin my first night with the other Phi Sig girls.  It's when Katie let's me wear her clothes probably almost everyday even though I usually don't ask and tells me I look ok when I'm freaking out about whether or not my dress is too short or my pants don't fit. It's when other Emma, school Emma, brings me things and doesn't get mad when I'm too lazy to leave the Dav and puts up with all my weird hyper times and even let's me drink more coffee even though I already had a red eye and an iced tea and brings me hot chocolate packets because we're poor and sometimes that 40% discount still leaves the prices a little too steep. It's Maeve's snapchats and constant support and willingness to send me pictures of her dog and knowing when I really need her to send me pictures of her dog and then letting me freak out about her dog for the next 5 minutes and also always responding with "Ok, on my way" when I text her to meet me at Brueggar's in 10 minutes and gossiping with me for hours about anything and everything until one of us has somewhere else to be and being my confidant and advice giver and taking all my neurotics in stride. It's when I can go literally weeks without texting Carrie but as soon as I drunk comment on her Instagram we fall right back into the same routine we've been in since Pre-K and it's when Rachel let's Carrie and I bombard her school friends on social media because she knows we get way too much pleasure trolling the shit out of people on the internet and she's willing to indulge us just one more time, even though she's done it forever and it's probably old. It's the unspoken understanding between Jelley and I that I don't think I can explain but she knows and I know and it's good and it gives me hope and sometimes is the reason I make decisions because I want her to always be able to see me the way she does or did and only she can.  It's the blurred lines from friendship to sisterhood and vice versa.  It's laughter and drunken nights and stolen traffic cones among other various objects and TDR Saturdays and Tuesdays and all the other things in between and it's when they clean my room for me because I'm disgusting and then when they call me on it and I get mad they leave it alone because they know I know. And I need them to know that because I met some other people that I might kinda have some things in common with and spend some time with, those new people will never be them and that everything college is and will be and the person I have become since being here, the person that is more me than I have ever been before, is 212% because of them and their unwavering friendship for a girl they met 6 months ago who is a little too much to handle sometimes and can sometimes lose sight of what is important because she takes them for granted and thinks they'll always be there and I need them to know that if you ever weren't there it would probably break me because everything I am in this world is attributed to those who surrounded me and you all are my oxygen and without you I couldn't breath.

Smells Like Teen Limbo

      It's a funny age, nineteen.  It's like you're hanging in limbo- a legal adult but still technically a teenager. Not to mention nothing cool happens when you turn nineteen. The last three years have accustomed me to reaching milestones like driving or watching R movies without my parents (this doesn't seem too exciting but my parents were very... enthusiastic... about age ratings and following them. I've ruined my fair share of pre-teen slumber parties because the movie selected was PG-13 and I a mere 12).  Eighteen opens the door for a flurry of opportunities to make poor decisions; buy cigarettes, gamble, vote for politicians based on how cool their name sounds and whose commercials annoyed you less. And the years to follow are pretty exciting, too. Twenty is a definitive end to childhood and young adulthood. Your feet have walked this earth for two full decades, a full score if we're being pretentious. And 21 is... well everyone knows what 21 is. And there sits nineteen, smushed between five years of exciting achievements; stuff you get just for breathing everyday.
     But for some reason I'm very excited about nineteen-- more exited than I was for the others. It seems like a year of possibility. The age itself doesn't give you anything, so I feel as if I have the personal obligation to make something cool happen this year all on my own.  There's one really nice thing about having a birthday this close to the new year, and that's that you can pretend the first 10 days of the new year don't actually count and your new year starts when your life actually began. This leaves ample time to finish the Christmas cookies and sit around doing nothing before you begin your New Year's resolution of working out and eating healthier. However, all this free time sitting around doing nothing serves the double purpose of having a lot of time to think about things, which leads to hoping for things that the year might bring.
    For as long as I can remember my parents have played classic rock for my sister and I. I actually think it was less for us than it just happened to be the music they liked, but it made an impact on us. Not only do we like the songs we grew up listening to, but we have discovered other oldies that might not have been introduced to us via parents.  Now, this being said, some think that Elvis is the King.  I think it's Billy Joel.  If you know me well, you know I have an undying passion for Queen, and Mr. Joel is rapidly approaching entrance to the pedestal I hold them on.  I have listened to both Queen's and Billy Joel's greatest hits albums so many times I might have broken iTunes and/or Spotify.  There's something about the classics-- there's a reason why they're classics after all. They represent everything that rock & roll is supposed to be.  You can listen to their songs and hear the heartbeat of an era; everything it wanted or dreamed of-- what it stood for.  If you listen to popular music now, you would think the only thing we're capable of thinking about is big butts and boys.
     So anyway, Billy Joel is the epitome of classic rock (to me, you can argue if you want but I won't care).  But until recently I had never heard, or at least not many times, one of his songs.  Then a few weeks ago it started to play as the back song to a scene in 13 going on 30 (judge me, please, I'm begging). Vienna. And as I listened, the hairs stood up on my neck, because it spoke to me and everything I had decided about my 19th year.
     I had decided I wanted to be a writer. And not just one who dreams of being published but ends up washed up in her mother's basement sad and lonely and a 'broken artist'. I want to be published. I want to take from the inspiration I draw from other authors and dish out some of my own. Maybe there's a starry-eyed kid riding her bike to the library every other day in the summer just to get out more books that I can help by putting myself out there a little. I was told in a high school english class that Bukowski was inspired by Kafka. He even wrote a poem about it. And it made me think about how one person can inspire so many, and if we apply the phone-tree effect, there could be even more.  It might be a stretch, but no Kafka could have meant no Bukowski, and then where would we be?  Now don't get me wrong, I am in no way comparing myself to either of their genius, but sometimes I wonder if my writing could inspire the next great author to finally ink something.  Vienna spoke to me and I'm not really sure why because I'm pretty sure the message I took from is the opposite of what Billy is trying to say.
     Slow down you crazy child, you're so ambitious for a juvenile but then if you're so smart then tell me why are you still so afraid. Where's the fire what's the hurry about? You better cool it down before you burn it out.  You've got so mush to do and only so may hours in a day. But you know that when the truth gets told that you can get what you want or you can just get old.
     There it is. "You can either get what you want or you can just get old". I think I finally realized, after a lifetime of people telling me life is short and I shouldn't waste it, that life is actually extremely short and it's terribly easy to glide through and never accomplish what you intended to or leave a legacy when you go.  It felt like I started high school a year ago and now I'm already knee deep in my second semester of college.  If I'm going to accomplish the things I want to, I need to start working towards them now.  And I need to work hard, because I don't take rejection well and there is an unhealthy amount of it waiting for me if I go down this career path without working my ass off to make anything I write the absolute best it can be.
      This was originally going to be an entry about my bucket list for 19 and 2015 and what not, but that's boring. And if there's one type of author that never gets published, it's the one that plays it safe. I'm done being scared to let people read what I write out of fear of not being good enough, or fear that they won't like it (haters gonna hate, am I right?). I'm done waiting for God to interfere and place me in the lap of a publisher.  I'm done wishing my life was somehow different and not doing anything about it.  It only took me 19 years to get here, but I'm finally ready to take advantage of my time, not waste it away, and somehow make my mark.

How Do You Cure Nostalgia?

     I love winter. There's three main reasons why: My birthday, basketball season, and Christmas.  It really is the most wonderful time of the year. When I was little it was about the gifts, but even then I associated it with visiting family that I don't often get to see and with free time and cookies and music and laughter and family traditions.  Now, I still think of all of these things when I think of Christmas, but when the season itself creeps up on me, I go through the traditions reflecting on what they were like when I was younger, on memories already formed rather than creating new ones.  My sister is weirdly obsessed with our traditions and would probably have a mental break down if we ever changed them too drastically. As it is this year she had to compromise more than she wanted to.  I, however, want to grow and adapt our traditions.  I want the ones we had as children to remain sacred in my memory and not be tainted by the less enthusiastic and more nostalgic ones that have been more recent.
      I spend a decent amount of time every December, at least for the past few years, engulfed in an inescapable nostalgia for the Christmases when I had to get out of my bed at 2 AM to tell my parents to stop wrapping their presents so Santa could come.  The days when I would go through the enormous struggle of putting on my snow pants and snow boots at recess just so I could play in the snow for maybe 5 minutes. When I could sit on my mom's lap and ride through Lights in the Park, wondering in awe about the real reindeer and what they would think about their imposters jumping over minivan after minivan. Falling asleep in front of the fire to the sound of my dad reading The Gift of the Magi on Christmas Eve. Pouncing on my sister a short 8 hours later with all the excitement in the world.  Times when I was too naive to feel guilty about all the presents under my own tree, and too young to wonder about others on this magical holiday.
      A favorite ornament of mine is about the size of and weighs less than a quarter.  It's a little girl with brown pig tail braids, bundled beyond necessity, making a snow angel.  I don't know why, but it makes me inexplicably happy and unreasonably more sad than an ounce of plastic should be able to.  All the bliss of Christmas is captured on her face, reminding you both of what Christmas as a child is like, and that you will probably never feel that innocent joy again.
      But then I look at all the other ornaments on out tree -- I see my parents' first Christmas together, my sister's birth, then mine, and all the milestones the two of us have hit since.  Our earliest birthdays, our licenses, our first jobs. All the family vacations, the sports we've played and the teams we've played on, and now college.  I like that I can see my growth from that innocent little kid to who I am now through one of our most sacred traditions.  My ornament collection. It's the one that expands by exactly one every Christmas Eve while we drink hot cocoa to the crackle of the fire. One day, I'll take that collection and hang it on my own tree and start my own traditions.  I like the idea of keeping parts of what all my fondest childhood memories are made of and adapting them into something more relevant.  As it remains, there's too much longing in my heart for dreams of sugarplums and simpler days.
       I've never been able to sleep on Christmas Eve.  Even now, at 18, well aware of what is really going on in the living room below me, the magic of Christmas manages to weave its way under my door and into my mind.  My pulse quickens giddily at the very thought of sharing a narrow stair with my sister Christmas morning while my dad videotapes his now grown daughters.  I smile at the thought of the two of us and my mom gathering around our nativity and singing happy birthday to baby Jesus, to remind us of the true reason for the holiday.  My heart lurches at the thought of visiting family that I haven't seen for a whole year and telling them all about my new life in a new city and how amazing it has been.  This, at least, is something I can cling to.  I can take comfort in knowing that one thing about this season hasn't changed, because from my corner it sure seems like everything else has.

Lessons via Lipstick

     I've officially finished my first semester of college. *deep breath* It went by terrifyingly fast.  Sitting in my living room with my group chat blowing up in my hands, I can't help but flash back to the first day my parents left me and I cried myself to sleep at 5pm. That was the first time I've cried for a non-movie or book induced reason since my dog died in the spring, and its the last time I've cried since. I've come a long way over these past 4.5 months, and I've learned so much. My classes were fine and I actually really enjoyed some of them, reaffirming what I already knew; that the path I've chosen for myself is the one on which I am meant to travel. My best grade was in my American Literature class, and it also happened to be the one I enjoyed the most.  In college writing, my third essay was so good that my professor is submitting it to the American University Journal of College Writing to potentially be published. (!!!!!!!!!!!). And though I enjoyed classes and did relatively well,  I upheld the family tradition of not letting my schooling get in the way of my education.  If I thought I grew a lot as a person last year, and I definitely learned a lot about myself back then, in these past months I've learned where I stand in relation to the rest of the world. I've learned some very important lessons about life and my bubble of privilege has been popped more times than I can count.  I learned that a long hot shower usually holds the answers to life's toughest questions. That a phone call to a close friend on a Saturday morning can cure a hangover and the overwhelming embarrassment that was Friday night. I've also learned that it is frighteningly easy to steal stuff from frat parties. Most importantly though, I learned that a tube of red lipstick can announce your presence before you even know you have one.
     My main goal in life is to be a recognized force.  Not a terror, and hopefully not a bitch (I'll do what I have to), but someone who is known for their drive and their ability to get things done. I want to be the person people turn to when they need help, and I want to be known for my accomplishments.  I want people to know. I think I took the first steps to becoming this woman- the one who I envision in my wildest fantasies about Park Ave penthouses and book deals and success- when I accepted my love for red lipstick.  I know this sounds tacky and probably really shallow, but underneath all that, its really true.
      There's a photograph of my Grammy, my Mom's mom, that sits on a book shelf in our living room.  It's black and white, but you can tell she's wearing lipstick. After all, that was the style. I was only eight when she passed away, so I never really got to know her the way I wish I could get to know all of my grandparents.  I've always been told I'm her spitting image, but I never saw it until I got my senior picture back and held the two up next to each other.  I'd always had a fascination with 'the Classics' - Marilyn, Audrey, etc.- so when this whole "red lip classic thing"  (thanks T-Swift) came back, especially after seeing Grammy slaying in hers, I was very much on board. However, high school is a tough time to change your image.  You're surrounded by people you've know your whole life and they aren't always willing to accept change, as much as you want to make it.  I love my basketball team to death, even now, a year removed, but they always teased me when I wore red lipstick. I know it was all in good fun and they didn't mean anything by it, but it can be hard to keep convincing yourself to do something in the morning when you know the only feedback you'll get is negative, no matter how harmless the intentions.  So after about half way through senior year, I took a break from the red lips.
     Once I got to American, I realize it was a fresh start. No one there knew if I did or didn't wear red lipstick, or maroon, or pink, or if I wore oversized flannels, or that I hadn't had short hair since that one awful time in 5th grade (aka my ugly phase-- we all had it, don't lie to yourself).  I could be who I wanted-- I could transform into that girl I see in her Park Ave penthouse.
      I've never really not been confident, but I've never felt the way I do now either.  Completely comfortable-- not really second guessing too much about myself. Obviously I have concerns, after all I am female and I still live in this horrid society that has unrealistic ideas about what a woman should look like. However this goes deeper than image. I lie in bed at night and think about all the things I did that day-- the work I turned in for class, or the way I interpreted that Whitman poem in Lit, or the way I joked to some customers at work about the snow (or lack there of, DC is dreadful for snow lovers like me), or the advice I gave to a friend about a problem they were having, and I'm happy. And isn't that all we can hope for in life anyway? To look back at the end of the day and not have any regrets?
     This in no way means I will stop trying to improve.  I think it's a good place to start though.  It's hard to make small improvements if you hate everything about yourself and wish you could just start new.  From here, I can take baby steps.  I still hate that I bite my nails, and I hate that I only feel comfortable writing about myself or things I know about really well.  I hate that I'm afraid to take risks because I'm so afraid of failure and I hate that I procrastinate everything until the last possible second.  I hate that I don't read enough and I hate that I can't do latte art consistently.  But these are all things I can improve on rather easily.  I love who I have become over these last 4 months -- I love my job and my friends and my school and my potential career path.  I love my black booties that I wear everyday, I love my oversized maroon flannel that I wear too much and don't wash enough. I love how there is usually an abundance of people in my room or in my bed. But more than anything, and most importantly, I love my red lipstick.