spring

each spring i get this feeling of melancholia in the center of my stomach. i get nostalgic and restless and i listen to the song cavalier and i anticipate goodbyes. the air feels wetter in my lungs and the world gets more colorful and charged like van gogh's arles. it's delicate but beautiful but breakable, and this is the time of year when the world teaches me the necessity of letting go.

of boys, specifically.

everyday when i walk past the bell tower to get to the parking lot, i'm reminded of one wet pink spring day nearly three years ago. i was heavy heartsick and listening to stacks, and poor and unsure about what i could achieve in the next years. during that week i would sit on a bench underneath the floating blossoms and pretend to look busy, but really to wait for a sunny-eyed boy to pass by. he was magic, and i couldn't have him, and he never believed what i could see in his smile. i saw him recently, for the first time since that wet pink world, and he still sparkles. it feels like springtime.

last year my spring was red like the new tulips surrounding the white house. he was a sudden thaw. a week-long kiss. we were magnetic for a few days--leaning farther than necessary into each other on unshaky metro rides and sitting silently, shoulders touching, as the only audience of the slow motion art film in the basement of the gallery. he told me he kissed me because i smiled like i had a secret. he wanted a mona lisa. i am a girl, and it ended as quickly as it began--just like springtime.

pressed between those years was a yellower spring revolved around a boy perpetually wearing red plaid. i spent that spring unbrave enough for him, and in his many entrances and exits since, i don't think i have ever been truly courageous. i have never been more frightened than to think that maybe i could love him. or that if i did, he probably wouldn't love me back. or that if i couldn't fall in love with someone to paper-perfect for me then i would never fall in love at all. so i didn't. i felt nostalgic that spring for things i never thought i'd know: the way he brushes his teeth. his heartbeat before he kisses me. his mother's handwritten notes. these things are already a memory. i had them for such a short time that they weren't even mine. like cherry blossoms, they were only fleetingly pink, floatingly white, and then they were gone.

springtime.

more new

2014 was the best year of my life. my dreams lined up to meet me this year, and i took them in hungrily and happily. i watched my life become something i always wished it would be. it was beautiful and fast and precious and full of feeling. it was everything i hoped for.

i carry memories of this year with me  like little snowglobes. they are delicate and they are perfect, and somehow i can watch them from the palm of my hand. even my most challenging moments are kept inside orbs of rose-colored glass, and i take responsibility for that. my life's mission statement is to take a conscious effort to find and make beauty, and this year i got it right. mostly.

my memories are idealized, sure, but not only in retrospect. i loved that morning commute down pennsylvania avenue, the city hustle, the 2am green line anxiety. i loved the soviet concrete jungle, the mashed potatoes, the dusty stairs of the school on taikos gatve. and i loved the loneliness of provo, the late nights in the library, the stress of planning for adulthood, and the distance of phone calls from indiana. and by that i mean, i loved it as much as i could. i loved it while i hated it. i tried my best to be grateful, and gratitude turned the year golden.

2014 was also a tremendous struggle for me. i sunk. i made mistakes. i broke habits. god and i became strangers. i didn't know what i wanted, or if i really had the strength others had seen in me for so long. i wondered if all my faithful fervor had been an illusion. i wondered if i wasn't worthy.

i never knew that experiences like this could happen simultaneously. i never knew that my mind and my confidence and my passions and plans could soar so high while my heart and my faith and my trust and diligence could sink so low. i was a canyon of a girl.

luckily, 2014 was also a year of reunion. i said hello to familiar hearts behind new faces and i said welcome home to parts of my heart that have long been living in other chests. my love came back to me. and it healed me. and god did, too.

and now, with new, i feel resolve. i'm ready, you know? i started 2015 with my first ever new year's kiss, and with the first time in a very long time that i have chosen to be vulnerable. it was a good start. i hope that 2015 brings more adventure, more realized dreams, and more important lines on my resume. but my greatest desire and my heartfelt resolution is to live it with bravery, kindness, and honesty. and most of all, to live it in the presence of god.