Possibilities.

So yesterday, I was sitting around my room and I looked at the calendar and realized a terrifying and exuberantly thrilling thing--my 5k is in just two weeks. Two weeks! Butterflies flitted to life within the lining of my stomach, and I felt reverberations of Fear and Anticipation prod at my heart, unsure of themselves. I hadn't ran all week due a very rude case of the common cold, and I was thus very worried about my progress as a runner for this coming race. So I laced up those sweet old Oasics and pulled my hair back, and went to conquer the world.

I queued up the music and I just ran. I ran a mile, and I kept going. I ran 1.5 miles, and I kept going. Eventually, I had to break for water and a stretch of the shins and hamstrings, but I kept going. 2 miles... 2.5 miles... I kept on. I struggled to finish out, but I wanted to do it, I needed to feel it, I had to see that "3.1" on the distance meter on the treadmill. I had to finish with wind sprints, taking breaks to struggle and sweat, but I kept going. It took me much longer than 35 minutes, since I stopped a lot, but I still finished... and frankly, that's what matters to me. That a month ago I couldn't run for 30 seconds without being overcome with anxiety and exhaustion. What a strange, beautiful reality.

And as Life comes at me, and I see things like "3.1 miles" on the treadmill, and "206" on the scale, I am seeing that she is about nothing more than Possibilities. Life is not about promises, it is not about guarantees--but it is, I declare boldly and with excitement, about possibility.

This life that I live within with my current days is but one version of possibility. It is a bubble of conformity, it is my perception of opportunity via my own availability heuristic. Carpe diem... I can decide each and every day how I will live life. I often think to myself at the end of a day as I step up the 2 flights of stairs to my apartment, "What if life is just a new opportunity each day to do right what you got wrong yesterday?"

It's an interesting concept. What if the day we died was when we completed the perfect day? What if each morning we awoke with eyes birthed into the light of tomorrow-turned-today, we were greeted with surprise... Oh! I thought that was my last day, surely I've done everything right. Perhaps today I can do better, perhaps today I'll complete the task. To live the "perfect day," to live the fulfilled life... we loved rightly, we thought all the most uplifting thoughts, we passed on kindness to a set number of people, we laughed the allotted amount, we felt the exact set of emotions that signify Life. Of course, I'm grateful this isn't the way things really are. But what if I lived each day to see how close I could get to that 100/100 final grade? If I gave the best hugs, the most genuine compliments, shared the most vulnerable ideas, push my physical limits, and learned to the full capacity of my mind?

I don't know where the next year will take me, or the next two years, or the next five. There's a strong potential that in 2.5 years, I'll leave Athens, and in the meantime I'll do a plethora of new and amazing things in this sweet city, still so new to my sophomore soul. There's also a chance I'll uproot, I'll blink one morning and begin a quest to the next place my restless soul carries me, the whims of god himself working through my pale skin and curious fingertips. These eyes have not seen enough sky, and these lungs will never inhale enough earthy energy, never enough to exude just how much I truly love this Life, and the humanity that abides within its sweet and curious confines.

So, Possibility: as my spirit sees the strength its sewn into my soul from the searing heartbreak that happens when first love meets tragedy and betrayal, and as my body, my being, becomes the brilliantly breathtaking beauty that I've always known resided beneath this layer of hesitation and insecurity (that is, I'm realizing how strong I am inside and out)--I'm realizing that life has deep, deep potential. Abiding potential. Declarative potential. Whimsical potential. And it is up for my taking.

Whether that means toes digging in sands abroad, or fingertips striking keys in cities of the northeast, or eyes kissing the stars of deep, mountainous skies of the west... and whether that is next year or not... it still means that my awareness is growing. My appetite, insatiable, is whet with excitement that Depression is not an end-all; Depression taught me that good things are worth fighting for, and darkness is a challenge for those who believe in light, despite the blindness of the soul.

Thank you, heartbreak, you know my name, and I know your face--and you have strengthened me. Thank you, restlessness--you've ruined me, gratifyingly, and for that, I may speak tongues of foreign descent and love hearts of tribes I never would have, had I been contented with Home.

but no... they say home is where the heart is,
and i have never known
roots--
just ideas,
concepts,
words,
dictionaries and
william wordsworth
(billy williams)
and that sweet lover of e.e.--
and it has shaped me.

home is whenever i'm with YOU.