A Year in Review

As I write this I am sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Bellingham, temperately homeless for the next 12 hours. Everything I own is locked in the back of a friend’s car sitting on the side of the road. My old room is empty and locked up, my new room is empty and locked up, and I have keys to neither. Yesterday I took my last final, finished my junior year of college, packed up my entire living space in 5 hours, move myself and the three other friends, and spent the night at a stranger’s house. Out of the past 48 hours I have been wake for 41.

This is a life which nine-months-ago me would never have imagined. But that’s only the start of what nine-months-ago me never saw coming. Nine-months-ago me could never have foreseen that I would choose to spend the summer in a town a two hours from everyone I used to know, take summer classes, work three part-time jobs, and live in a house with three complete strangers.  Nine-months-ago me didn’t know that in a year I would be a published news photographer, that walking two miles for a cup of coffee and a friend would become the norm, that I would eat in restaurants by myself, and I would ask my parents not to help me move, that I would know all the hiking trails in Bellingham like the back of my hand, that I would photograph more protests in two quarters than I had ever seen in my life, and that I would have the most amazing group of friends in the whole wide world.

Nine-months-ago me didn’t expect any of that. And then college happened.

 

College has an ineffable magic about it, like walking on a tightrope high above a city. You feel strong and powerful and free, buoyed by the everyday novelty of being on your own for the firs time.  It’s a pleasure made all the more exhilarating by the knowledge that you could fall off at any moment- and the certainty that you won’t. There’s nothing quite like it. You feel invincible and terrified all at once.

That feeling has followed me throughout these last nine months. Everything I do is part of the exciting journey to spread my wings, test the boundaries, and all those other wonderful clichés. I expanded my brain through interesting classes, I pushed my body with constant walking and physical exercise, I built up my tolerance through dealing with exasperating college bureaucracy, and I increased my skills with constant experimenting. But most importantly I rebuilt my ability to love through an amazing group of friends, and my ability to think through an environment which welcomes questions.

There’s a poem by Robert Frost called “Into My Own” which perfectly sums up this past year for me.

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew–
Only more sure of all I though was true.

For me, college was the dark stand of trees. I vanished into it for the past year, not knowing what I might find but excited about the prospects. And while I have done so many things, and experienced so much, and although my life is an adventure which nine-months-ago me could never have guessed at – at the core I am still myself.

This post is not  just about looking at this year in review, but rather about looking at my year of review. Over the past 270 days, nine-months-ago me has been slowly turning into right now me. Day by day I reviewed what I knew of myself and what I believed and tested it to see if it was still true. Step by step I faced challenges which changed me from a girl sitting alone in her dorm for the first time desperately wondering if she would make friends to the girl who is sitting in a coffee shop with no current room to speak of and with too many friends to count. Today me was always there, but I didn’t know it. This year has given me the confidence to embrace the world and all of it’s challenges, even the goofy, terrifying, frustrating, and absurd ones.

…

I wanted to write a post about all the things which have happened to me in the past year, all the successes, all the failures, all the college firsts. I wanted to write a post which was a thank you to all of my friends this year, to tell them that I couldn’t have done it without them and that they have made me a better person. I wanted to write advice to everyone back home about the first year of college and living on your own. And I wanted to say how truly blest I am to have the chance for this experience which so many others never get.

But how do you say that all in one post?

Maybe like this: These last nine months have strengthened me in ways I could never have imagined. Friends, events, and challenges, have all come together to make me into a better person. It was scary and sometimes hard, but I would say this to each and every one of you – Find your own dark stand of trees and walking into it, you might be surprised to find you are capable of more than you know.