Typically for these year-in-review blog entries that all good bloggers must inevitable create, I sift back through all the posts I've had, I read letters I wrote and didn't send, and I turn through the pages of what is usually a 10-inch-tall pile of notebooks so that I can remember what the last 12 months really felt like.
This time, it appears from January to April of 2008, I sailed off the edge of a very flat earth. There are no journal pages, I can't find so much as a scribble in the corner of some class notes about what those months were like. I mean, I remember what they were like: great masses of loss, dreams where I hugged God wearing roller skates, a hurricane of hands and glances that meant nothing to me and something to everyone else. They were a very dense, and very hollow few months.
In April I was a girl growing up in East Germany, until the wall came down and I had to figure out how to live in a country where the signs changed, the borders blurred, and I couldn't go to the grocery store without being reminded of what had disappeared, and what had been gained.
In May I was frustrated when disappointment moved in with something that still looked an awful lot like love, and when I held my ear to the wall they shared I only wished they would quiet so I could get some sleep. They fought every night and into the morning, stomping their feet on the floors and sometimes something that sounded like scratching on the walls.
In June I discovered God in a three year-old boy. I understood that I needed love in my life, but that I had been looking for it in all the wrong places. Because right in front of me, the whole time, was a little boy who thought I could make the whole world better, and I could always take care of him, and when he heard me come in the door he ran to me and jumped into my arms and there was no one else in the whole big wide world that loved me like that. In June, I met the best man I've ever loved.
In July, I became a book.
In August, I had a bubble fight in Lindsey's kitchen.
In September I dyed my hair pink.
In October I ignored everything I'd ever learned in Biology and started to ignore human functions necessary for life. I didn't eat enough, didn't sleep enough, drank too often, kissed too many people for very strange reasons. I slacked on school work, put too much effort into charity work, and lost ground on all of my self work. But I felt whole, and the heartache that the year had plagued me with started fading.
In November, Obama won the Presidency, I pulled off the biggest event for charity in Africa I had ever tried, went head-over-heels for a boy, and began clawing desperately at the end of the semester while trying not to fail out of college.
December was sleep, friends, and not looking back at the past at all.
So here's January, and it's raining, and I turn 22 years old in 11 days. This year was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it.
<3gen
