Looking Back
It is a year ago. I am packing for a spring break trip to West Palm Beach. I have just cut my hair and I hate it. I want my sexiness back. I look in the mirror and feel self-loathing at the ten winter pounds that make me feel awkward in my bathing suit. I'm cursing image stereotyping.

Sunday night before finals week I am doubled over in my room, experiencing the foreshadowing of the bladder infection that will ruin my spring break. I clean out my insides with raw cranberry juice and litres of water, stupidly turning down an offer for preventative antibiotics. Little do I know that in a week I'll be in the emergency room, pissing blood, and barely able to sit down. I don't anticipate spending $120 on antibiotics that will make me burn at the slightest sunlight and make my skin itch enough to madden a wildebeest. I will not admit to myself for a long time that I do not have fun in Palm Beach. I feel too lucky to be going there and everything else is bad enough to make even a vacation stifled by illness seem fun.

I am in the middle of divorcing my roomates. I cannot bear to spend any more time at home since the two girls have moved out and the one guy I know is never at home. I've been left with one red-necked asshole from South-Central Oregon and the looming presence of his hippie-pot-dealing friend who is moving in. I am getting myself out of that house, putting down copious deposits on my present apartment, and breaking a year's lease with my suddenly not-so-friendly landlords. I am out $525 in deposits from breaking my lease and another $800 for the new place.

My boyfriend is moving down from Seattle to live with me. I have to convince myself that this doesn't scare me, but it does. However, anything is better than living where I'm at, in a place I'm scared to leave my bedroom. I tell myself, in either case, that I'm chicken shit. Maybe I am. I want and I fear cohabitation. Cohabitation preceeds marriage. I want and I hate marriage.

I want to stop the dreams. It is springtime and they've been coming since two weeks after September 11th, when I first realized that my life could end. I want to stop the guilt and the pain. I am almost numb. The near-black depression from my bout with Depo-Provera is wearing off. I would feel human again if I weren't so threatened by my living situation.

I am talking on the bridge, playing an archetype, building the castle. It is the second term of Brown-sensei's animation class. Murray and I have just gotten to know each other. I'm flowering again, after a long winter. I'm starting to grow up.

******************************************

Was this my life? Was this the awful, awkward drama that I was living?

I think it was, but sometimes it is as a dream.

I remember watching, from across the room, people that I yearned to connect with. I remember being trapped in my own body, speaking so loudly, not being heard.

This is my voice, and I have found it.

I remember trying so hard to build something, skinning my knuckles, breaking my hands, beating my head against walls of air, waking sweating and alone to phantoms.

These are my castles, I have built them here.

*****************************************

In one year I have found and lost myself many times. I have climbed walls only to see more walls on the other sides. But for all the walls I find, I manage to get over or tear down a good part of them. And that makes me proud.

I have so much to be proud of.

I've spent the last year living with my boyfriend, something that now comforts, rather than scares me. Sometimes we're frustrated by our opposing paradigms, sometimes we don't get along, but we live and love in peace and harmony. We're coming up on the BIG THREE now, the "anniversary-o-doom," as I jokingly call it. We wake up in the mornings and are grateful for each other, for every day that is given us, and for a life that has blessed our paths to cross.

I've spent the last year learning; resenting my schoolwork and buying into practical experience. I've gone places and done things, climbed (real) mountains I never thought I would summit. In the last six months I've been to see President Clinton, Tori Amos, and Maya Angelou.

I've spent the last year mending; waking up somewhat surprised at the complexity of my own thought and emotion, finding that I now embrace some of the values that I used to find stupid and unrealistic. Faith, love, honor, spirituality. This leaves me somewhat less cynical and somewhat more frustrated. I'm a softer person, more open, more scared.

I've spent the last year being turned on my head by surprises and rewards. I'm learning the rules. I'm working my id a little bit into my ego. I'm finding that I can still be pleasantly surprised by myself and by others-- that when I learn to have a little faith in love and leave something up to fate, I may actually have a moment of serendipity. It's not a game; it's a dance.

I've spent the last year making new friends, many more than I thought I'd ever again have after the schism in high school. I've spent the last year making peace with old friends and severing ties where needed.

I've spent the last year growing.

***************************************

And now I'm thinking about a year abroad, an unbelieveable expense (atop $36,496 accumulated debt to date) but an insurpassable opportunity. Now the world is on the verge of war. Now I have more to lose than I ever have before, and so much more to gain.

Here's to the coming year, may it be full of surprises.

Every passing day is another chance to turn it all around.