Twenty~Five

The end of the year is near, once again. Why does the time go by so fast? The days are getting colder and the daylight is getting shorter. During this time, the loneliness sneaks up on you so easily. It tries to convince you that the coldness and austerity of the outside has moved into the inside, too. I'm missing the Florida sun and all the love I was learning, exactly one year ago. This year, I am back to snow, old friends, and a familiarity that I have been allowing myself to mistake for boredom. Such a mistake on my part. This kind of familiarity should be defined as a constant stream of love that you get so used to it becomes unrecognizable. It is an extreme privilege to experience this, it is an extreme mistake to let it go unrecognized. My wish for myself, as the year comes to a close, is that I no longer "get used" to the love I am given. I hope I can re-learn to relish in every single bit of it. I'm sitting here in chorus class right now, listening to the...

I'm writing right now, because I am in a beautiful place in my life and it would be a shame not to type the words written on my heart. How my heart always aches for some tangible evidence of what being alive feels like at any given moment of this journey.  I was talking to Keeley last night about how I feel some profound changes within me and I can't seem to describe the deep gratitude I feel. When I think about the love and beauty this life has brought me, tears well up in my eyes. When I think of all I've learned in the past few years, I realize how infinite the ability to grow really is. I love myself now. It took years and years of trying and failing, and trying and failing, but I love myself now. I hope these words have enough weight to settle down in my heart and stay there for the rest of my existence. I found a real love, and then I lost it. One of the most beautiful aspects of this life, in my opinion, is the ability to feel. I feel your absence now, more than ...

I woke up this morning and I was alone. I walked into the kitchen, where normally your faces would be waiting for me. Faces I will never erase. Faces I woke up to every morning for 10 short months. It's difficult to describe the emotions this goodbye brought for me, and at this very moment i feel kind of numb to it. But when I was laying there on the floor with Jon during our last hour, watching the strips of flickering daylight fade from the walls of his mom's rented apartment, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the gut. He held me while I cried and drooled all over him for at least the fourth time this week. I looked back at Keeley the moment we got to the airport to drop me off. Tears were streaming down her face and I thought to myself, "how is it possible I've found so much love here?" I'm so deeply sad that this chapter of my life is over. I fell completely in love with a group of people and let them become my world for a while, and i will never forget...

The thought of Americorps ending in less than two weeks makes my stomach sink to the ground. Ten months. Ten months of endless inconsistency, moving a billion times, eating food off the floor and wearing the same clothes seven days in a row. My standards have been significantly lowered, for sure, but my expectations have been exceeded beyond my wildest dreams. It may seem unbelievable to compare this program to a dream, after the bed bugs and moldy walls and baling cardboard for 8 hours straight and some *very* difficult people. But I've discovered that if you do the most mundane tasks in the world with people you love, they can easily transform into bliss. And I learned that any difficult person that makes you feel tiny and worthless can be buffered by someone who sees the entire world in you. I've been so lucky this year to find people who see that in me. I see a world of love around me everyday, my life is painted with gratitude where a little more cynicism used to be. ...

It's difficult for me to find the words to encompass the past few weeks at St. Dorothy's Rest, and something inside me has prevented me from writing. But here I am, because I know later on I will be thankful for every piece of evidence I can look back on that this year happened and was very real, even if this kind of evidence feels a bit contrived. It is beautiful here and often I feel as though I'm living in a dream. We're surrounded by fields of green and tall trees that reflect the sunlight in the most perfect way. Often I walk out to a look out spot at the perimeter of the property at the end of day and watch the sky change colors ever so subtly. The sunsets here don't scream at you, like they did in Vegas. There are no explosions of color, no lava or cotton candy pouring out of the clouds, or if there are, we can't see them from where we are. Instead, it's the slightest change from baby blue to light grey to pale pink, a change so delicate it could ea...

8:59 am. I'm getting all goofy and sentimental right now, maybe because I got four hours of sleep and just chugged a strong, nearly unpalatable cup of coffee. I feel like laughing and crying and taking a calculus test and listening to Fergie all at the same time. I'm inspired, I'm motivated, I'm grateful. There's three months left, and even though that's a long time, it doesn't seem long enough. Joining this program has made my whole world bigger. It has changed my perspective. The spots where my life used to feel limited now feel limitless. The spots where loneliness resided are filled with love. I don't know how I will be able to leave this, this hallowed experience. There is this tremendous, simple joy I feel just to know I have crossed paths with these people and will never be able to uncross them. I was listening to this Bon Iver song last night, and though usually his lyrics are a bit incoherent, one line stopped me in my tracks. "At once ...