Ten years...

"Life is in the living. Keep your chin up, bella" 

Now I'm not sure if he still reads this or remembers my blog here. But it's these little reminders of his that help me clear my mind - maybe it's strange to say that it like that but there's no other real way of saying it.  (Then again, it's getting uncanny how good his timing is....) As I started writing this post - I felt it appropriate to include. 


Anyways back to the original point of this post. I've been meaning to write this post for the longest time since the beginning of the new year but never quite got around to publishing it. So here goes. (Also - credit should go to T @ All Set for this idea)


So ten years have passed. In the last decade, I...

• fell in love with the Backstreet Boys
• helped catalog ancient pottery shards and fragments with Columbia University's Crete expedition. 
•  fell in love with one of my best friends
• welcomed my baby brother to the world
• split my chin (a second time - while doing cartwheels in the hallway of our NYC apartment building) - got stitches. 
• memorized all the words to Follow Me by Uncle Kracker with my best friend at the time. 
• Discovered Aqua and Toy Box with my best friends now "adopted" sisters.
• Watched Bush Jr. get elected.
• Watched the Twin Towers fall.
• Moved from NYC to Maine
• Skipped 8th grade - entered 9th grade two months late and two years younger
• Met my bestfriend - now "adopted" brother.
• Went island hopping around the Caribbean
• Sunburned, wrote a 12 page research paper on Neanderthals.
• Ran cross country, swam and played tennis competitively.
• Moved to the Caribbean after finishing sophomore year.
• Flew to Italy and spent three months studying at an Italian highschool
• Moved back to the French West Indies/Caribbean
• Entered Boston University - and successfully earned a Bachelor's in Ancient Greek and Latin.
• Successfully completed Boston University's Core Curriculum program.
• Served as Layout Editor, Editor-in-Chief and as a Writing tutor for the program.
• Published several poems and translations.
• Lost my three aunts and grandmother. 
• Studied for the SATs and the LSAT.
• Played Helen of Troy in Troilus and Cressida.
• Fell in love again with a  computer nerd.
• Consequently learned about computer coding, engineering and crashing.
• Also learned how to play video games.
• Broke several hearts.
• Healed several others.
• Applied to and enrolled in law school.
• Danced till the break of dawn and walked back home in the snow watching the sunrise.
• Fell in love with Boston and created a family of friends there. 

The list could go on and on. I've fallen in love with my world and with what I built around myself. Often, I feel as though people disbelieve me when I say that I build my world around and with my friendships. And yet, I believe it to be true with every part of myself. Ask my family or ask the few friends that have seen me break down and cry. I could talk about the beauty of the human connection or some other cliche but I won't. As Stephan King wrote:

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

As a final note - these past few years have taught me how to pick myself back up again. Time and again. I've fallen hard so many times and yet, I'm still here. Alive and happy. Really happy. 


And to those who are my friends, my lovers, my family....  Thank you so much for everything.