the same stars

i had forgotten what a twisting heart feels like. i had forgotten how it felt to sit in my room, listening to too much carole king, missing someone with a dull ache in my chest. i don't cry too much. when i used to cry, it was out of heartbreak, fear, rejection. my tears these days are often a combination of frustration, happiness, and longing. it's still easy to smile. i don't spend my days hoping my parents won't notice swollen eyes and a heavy heart. i feel lighter, these days. i guess the difference between now and then is the certainty of the future, the steadiness of love, the hope and joy and wonder of every passing day. i open my eyes a little wider now, and even though i wish the days would go by faster, i try to stop and savor what i can because soon i'll never have this time again. i can step outside and look at the beautiful sky and love this place for what it is, and what it means to me. i'm growing up, and it's a little scary, but it feels good to be able to grasp onto my past for a bit longer before letting it go. and besides, it'll always be back here, waiting for me.

we are miles apart right now but this is a tether than no distance can sever. and i wonder where you are, are we looking at the same stars again? it comforts me to know that we are still sleeping under the same sky, and that the winds rolling down the coast mean that we have the same air in our lungs. i take a deep breath and it calms me. patience.  one day at a time, one slow crawl of the sun through the sky. i can do this. i can do this. i can do this.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will be be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
-- Walt Whitman

had a feeling i could be someone, could be someone

life is climbing to the pitch-perfect peak of a symphony, and i'm sitting here waiting for it to crash down into a crescendo. beautiful happy things have been swirling around me for the past few weeks in a blur of family (old and new), friends, love, laughter. but in my heart i can feel things slowly dying down. jeff is gone in connecticut, last bleary spoken words at 6:30am on thursday; my family is leaving for home one by one. soon enough it'll be the four of us here in my house, just like i'm in high school again, and the wait begins. i feel like i've been in a state of transition ever since i graduated college (because let's face it: college was a state of transition in itself but it always felt like home). but i keep on keeping on. life goes by quickly but there's still so much that lies ahead. counting down the days but never wanting any to pass me by. i want adventure in the great wide somewhere, i want it more than i can tell. but it's all a great adventure, isn't it? not just the stars and the moon, but also the earth and the wind and the sand and the sea? like diving off a cliff and never looking back --

-- here goes nothing, she says. here goes nothing.

this is the story of a girl

today i went to a meeting in the parish hall of my old grade school. the meeting was a training for substitute teaching at that very school, which is strange and interesting and circular in its own way. but what struck me most about tonight, when i walked into that room, is how utterly unchanged it looked - down to the same old tiles, the same auditorium stage, the same round tables with the faces scratched from age and use. i sat down at one of the tables (thankfully, they had enough common sense to get new chairs after ten years) and could almost see myself as a shy ten-year-old, sitting across the table staring at what i would become.

and i stared across that room and i saw as i had in all its different incarnations: dark and strobelighted for our seventh and eighth grade dances; stark and full of white robed kids before our confirmation and graduation ceremonies; loud and crowded as it always was during our lunch hour; hushed and spotlit for every annual talent show. i grew up in that room and i never even noticed until i came back, unwittingly, ten years later.

at the end of the training i ducked into the bathroom to see if it, too, had remained the same. sure enough, it was as though i had stepped into 2001 - the same off-white tiles, the same off-white stalls, the same single sink and the same blue ribbom wallpaper border. i stood in front of the mirror and brushed the hair out of my face and realized that although i am now twenty-three and so different than i how used to be, there i was: standing in the same place and doing the exact same thing as my eighth-grade self. there were the same eyes peering out at me; they hadn't changed a bit (and you know what they say about the eyes). so there i was, completely different and yet still, somehow, the same. and in that moment i realized the biggest difference between me, today, and the girl who looked in that mirror all those years ago: as hard as she tried, she could never, ever like what she saw. the girl looking in the mirror today sees it all for what it is and what it has been (beauty and flaws alike) - but unlike the girl from long ago, this one wouldn't change a thing.

beautiful and crystalline and epic

notre dame is pulling off at exit 77 with your heart in your throat. notre dame is the first glimpse of the golden dome calling me back home. notre dame is the way any ordinary landmark is extraordinary through the lens of memory.

notre dame is sprinting across a driveway and tackling and hugging. notre dame is best friends for life. notre dame is walking to the bookstore and laughing at old jokes. notre dame is buying unnecessary school merchandise just because.

notre dame is old friends and new friends. notre dame is sharing a mirror and appliance cords getting tangled. notre dame is dancing around the house to an ipod while getting ready. notre dame is taxi cabs and three dollar fare. notre dame is jumping around to 80s songs and screaming all the words and swaying in a circle. notre dame is dancing until 3am and staying up talking until 4.

notre dame is waiting out two stadium evacuations on the concrete concourse floor, sitting on a poncho with two of my best friends. notre dame is walking back into that stadium and looking around and seeing it mostly full after two hours of lightning and rain. notre dame is most of those people still coming back after the second evacuation. notre dame is screaming my throat sore even when there's two minutes left and not even a chance of a win.

notre dame is standing in the back of the crowded basilica. notre dame is kneeling on the floor even though it hurts a little. notre dame is looking up at the vaulted ceilings and feeling like the luckiest person in the world. notre dame is tearing up when the folk choir sings an a capella alleluia. notre dame is getting choked up and almost sobbing at the sound of the alma mater. notre dame is a friend's hand on my shoulder saying it's okay.

notre dame is lighting a candle at the grotto and praying thank you, thank you, thank you. notre dame is the way there's a still a hush even though the place is crowded with tourists. notre dame is the way that when i'm there, it feels like no time has passed at all. notre dame is our lady of the lake watching over us always. notre dame is family. notre dame is love.

it was the end of a decade but the start of an age

today i was looking through old pictures, primarily those from the end of our 2008 fall break trip in barcelona, spain. we had just arrived from traveling for five days in cold norway and germany, and it was 75 degrees and sunny in spain. in almost all of these pictures, we're smiling; not just scheduled smiles for the camera, but real, open-mouthed grins, traces of laughter from something just outside the frame. those three days in barcelona were some of the happiest and carefree days of my life. the weather was warm and we dipped our feet into the mediterranean and we ate delicious food and sat in the sun, drinking sangria and enjoying life.

on our last night we wandered down to port vell, and sat on the edge of the dock with wine and cheese and i felt as though my heart could have soared. i was in a beautiful place with people that i loved and i was so happy, truly happy, and some of the things that had weighed heavily on my heart for the past few months lifted for a while. i have never been so engrossed in a moment in time as that last night on the pier, sipping wine from a plastic cup and laughing, head tipped back.

i feel like ever since i've graduated i've been wallowing in a pit of nostalgia and recently i've been trying to crawl out. that feeling of happiness i felt on the barcelona pier, walking through london streets, licking a cone of gelato in rome, giggling with friends in my dorm room, walking across south quad looking at the dome and the sunset sky -- i want to feel that way about my life now. i want to love the past but to a degree, let go, so that i can live in my present and be as fully happy as i was then.

in eat, pray, love the author introduces a concept where your entire sense of self can be defined in a single word. my word is traveler. i have always been a traveler. i boarded my first plane when i was less than six months old and ever since then i've always been itching to go places, see new things, visit corners of the world where i've never been. i left home after graduating high school and in a way i've been traveling ever since. D.C. might not be my favorite adventure but it's definitely a huge part of the overall journey, and for that i am grateful. so i'll hang on. and i'll keep traveling. and i will be happy.

for the burning in our veins

have just come to the realization that i am in the midst of the biggest writer's block ever. i look back on some things i've written before and i wonder to myself, why on EARTH am i not writing? i do try sometimes, but for some reason i just seem to repeat the same things over and over, and i can't make anything come out the way i want it to.

but for the first time in my life, i have an idea. a real book idea that i think could really get somewhere. i actually have some semblance of a planned-out plot. i always said i wanted to write poetry but for the first time in my life i have an idea for something longer than a few pages, and it's a feeling like no other.

all i have left to do is write.

i don't know when this block will go away, when i'll be able to let the prose pour out of my fingertips like it used to, in my elementary school story notebooks. but i am armed with an idea and a keyboard, and when the time comes--whether it be two days or two years from now--i will be ready. and i will write.

even though the moment passed me by

i'll never forget that morning; the lump in my throat, the wide-eyed disbelief, the feeling of hanging on the edge of a precipice.

to this day, when i see pictures i feel like i could climb inside and be exactly where i was that day. the way the ground felt under my feet, the breeze that ruffled my hair and the sun that made us bake inside our shapeless black robes. the way i felt when i walked out of the tunnel into the bright light of the stadium: i looked up at the blue sky and at the people all around me and for the first time, i felt truly proud. i was proud of myself and everyone else that day, because we had made it through those four years and had something to show for it. we had learned. and that's what college is, really: learning in every aspect of the word.

at the very end, i wandered around the campus grounds with full eyes and a heavy heart. i said goodbye to every person, every place, all the while feeling like it was all a dream. leaving was inevitable, but leaving was unthinkable. how could it be that so much of my life whizzed by in this place: me at eighteen, thrust into a brave new world; at nineteen, living and loving; at twenty, making mistakes and facing consequences; at twenty-one, independent and free and incandescently happy. i retraced the spots where i had my first kiss, fought bitter fights, rolled around in the snow, rode my bike in the sunshine, splashed in the fountain, yelled my throat sore, whispered at night, turned pages, typed furiously, scribbled poetry, broke my heart, broke my bones, danced 'till i was out of breath. it's hard to fit four years into a paragraph, or an hour's time, but on that last day it was like i relived it all.

throughout my four years at notre dame i was exposed to countless opinions and sentiments about the place, both positive and negative. and for me, the one thing that rang true was this: from the outside, you can't understand it, and from the inside, you can't explain it. the university of notre dame is a part of my life that i loved then, cherish now, and probably romanticize - but those four years changed me. they taught me who i was, who i wanted to be, and what things in life were worth fighting for. they taught me to hold on to my faith and make it an ever-fixed part of my life. they taught me that no one is perfect, and no ever will be, and that all we should do is try to be our very best. they taught me that the people that matter are the ones who will stay.

they taught me that even if we have to let go, our time was was real. it happened. we will carry it with us for the rest of our lives, and no one can take it away from us.