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.

when the rain starts to fall

on a more uplifting note - this one's for you, my love.

I'll be there, my darling, through thick and through thin

When your mind's in a mess and your head's in a spin

When your plane's been delayed, and you've missed the last train.

When life is just threatening to drive you insane

When your thrilling whodunit has lost its last page

When somebody tells you, you're looking your age

When your coffee's too cool, and your wine is too warm

When the forecast said, “Fine,” but you're out in a storm

When your quick break hotel, turns into a slum

And your holiday photos show only your thumb

When you park for five minutes in a resident's bay


And return to discover you've been towed away

When the jeans that you bought in hope or in haste

Just stick on your hips and don't reach round your waist

When the food you most like brings you out in red rashes

When as soon as you boot up the bloody thing crashes

So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear...

When you break a rule, when you act the fool

When you've got the flu, when you're in a stew

When you're last in the queue, don't feel blue

'cause I'm telling you, I'll be there.

-- Louise Cuddon, I'll Be There For You

we spent time in swings empty

day five - your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

i was listening to third eye blind the other day and when the lead singer wailed out how's it going to be when you don't know me anymore? i couldn't help but think of you.

there are a million emotions i could name that, in some way in the past, related to you. guilt. naivete. hurt. anger. inadequacy. frustration. loneliness. and maybe, in fleeting moments - happiness, something close to love.

but what i never felt with you was calm. safety. the feeling that i could wrap myself up in you as if you were a sweater, and close my eyes and sleep forever. our relationship was fueled by angst, by uncertainty, by the things left unspoken that haunted me for those years we were together.

i still don't quite know what to make of you. i don't think i will ever understand you, the way you could break a chair over a lost football game but couldn't shed one tear the day before i went across the ocean for four months. somewhere deep inside there's a real you, a real person with real feelings - but it's covered up with your brash attitude and braying laugh and a thick armor that deflects any difficult question or subject. i don't know what, or who, made you that way, but i know that i couldn't be happy with someone who locks real emotion deep inside themselves, never to see the light of day.

i guess i found out what it's like to not know you anymore - but i don't think i ever really knew you, not at all.

i'm sorry i hurt you. this much is true. no matter how much i needed to get out of our relationship, you still didn't deserve for me to neglect you and distance myself and yes, kiss another boy, all the while assuring you that it would be okay. no one deserves that, not even you. but the truth is, i didn't know anything other than you, and i was afraid of the void you'd leave if i let you go. i was a coward, but i was also young. i look back at myself then and it's so clear how lost and alone i was back then - i just didn't fully know it.

even that day i said goodbye you i didn't truly think i was going to do it. deep down, though, we both knew it was happening. it was too late for us: we could never have fixed it. i don't think we were meant to fix it. and i knew that i had to let you go not only because you deserved better, but also because i deserved better.

i have a new life now and i am happy in ways i've previously never known how to be. the only thing i regret is that the way we went out completely killed any chance at friendship, because i think in another world we really could have been friends. now all i can do is hope that you're happy too.

in the end, our story is over. i hope that when you think of me, you don't hate me. in fact, i hope you don't think of me at all. i hope you live out a full live. i hope that whatever it is that makes you lock your emotions away will disappear.

(then i whisper these wishes to the wind, and let them go.)

hanging on the edge of nothing

continuing this series...

day five - your dreams.

i just want to be a writer, okay?

it's not my fault that i have only one talent in life, and that talent decides to come and go as it pleases. it may not even be that great, what do i know? all i know is that the one thing i want to do with my life (write) is the most difficult thing to achieve as a "real" job. i'm not competitive enough for an actual writing job and my grades weren't good enough so an MFA is probably out of the question, even if i decided i wanted to jump back into school again.

and the worst part is, i don't even know what i want to write - poetry? maybe, but the only poetry i can manage to write these days are either a) dripping with treacly nostalgia or b) about doomed love/my past that i've romanticized to sound more glamorous than it actually was! i tried to write short stories but that never worked out. i even tried to start writing a book and well, that just sucked. the only thing that i'm really that good at is writing non-fiction, writing about myself and my life experiences in overly romantic terms. but could i really write a memoir? my life isn't even that exciting!

i'm having a minor life crisis here.

i don't want to sit in an office and write about things i barely care about when there's real truth and beauty in the world waiting to be written about! i don't want to stay inside all day when i'd be happier just sitting in a field writing about a freaking blade of grass! i don't want to force myself to find a job that i know i will never love because i am not a career girl, i'm a writer, probably not the best writer, but a writer nonetheless. and i want to do what i love, is that too much to ask for?

i know so many people here in DC who are all about careers, careers, careers. if you don't have a career path or a five-year-plan or any vision for your future then you are not a feminist, you do not have self-worth, and a whole bunch of other nonsense that, on paper, should apply to me.

i don't care about a career, or a five-year-plan, or losing my freaking independence as a woman if i don't have a job. i am a writer and that means that my primary purpose in life is to feel, and then put those feelings into words. i want to love life, and i want to feel the good and the bad as much as i can, and i want to enjoy friends and enjoy family and i want passion and i want joy and i want anger; i want to "suck the marrow of life," damn it!

i am so frustrated with trying to find a job that i know i won't enjoy, when all i want to do is write and write and write until i have enough to make some sort of compilation and get someone, anyone to read it and get someone, anyone to say it's good enough.

that's it. and yet, it seems so impossible.

i will never forget those books and poems and essays that i've read that have made me laugh out loud, cry, think, write, dance, call my friends and say "you just have to read this book/poem/essay/whatever it is." i will never forget the way other people's words have made me feel, the moment i realize that this is important, that it's speaking to me in ways i never knew were possible.

i just want to give that feeling to someone else. is that too much to ask for?