Around the Next Corner

I keep thinking about the young woman I was in college.

It's the fall weather; the late-August orientation days; the words I sit with everyday now (and again) like theory, agency, question, and socioeconomic. It's living in New York state again. It's something even more.

It's the faith, the deep seated knowledge, that this will be home. That I will find my people. That there will be hours, days, weeks, of which I will love every, single minute. That this is right. This is exactly where I am supposed to be. (It comes again, it arrives again, years and years later, expected and unexpected, and welcomed with a full heart, a whoop of celebration.)

I missed the city while I was Connecticut this past weekend. I fell asleep my first night "home" happy to be in Connecticut and happy to miss New York. It has been years and years since I held the happy and the missing on a first night in Connecticut.

I keep thinking about the young woman I was in college. On the brink. Always ready to take the leap of faith. And how many times that young woman leapt and how many times she landed on both feet. Or even better, how many times she was caught.

She knew and she didn't know, in the same moment, in the same breath. The knowing and the not knowing mixed together to create some of the best. Always the best, even after all this time.

She's around here somewhere, that woman. With her knowing and her not knowing and her leaping right into the best. I keep thinking about her, because I'm fairly certain she is just around the next corner.




[Photo from September 2002 (hard to believe it has believe it has been ten years) with one of the best, who will remain faceless for now in the name of privacy. Please note the disposable camera in my hand, ha.]