2012

It’s funny how a New Year can make you take a step back, reevaluate yourself, and remind you of what is important. It takes looking back and seeing how far you’ve come to realize where you can go and what you are capable of. Years from now, you won’t remember the trivial little things, the feeling of loss that you swore you’d never be able to get rid of, that best friend that you somehow seemed to lose along the way whether it was due to circumstance or death, or the boy that dragged your heart around in the dirt for far too long. You will carry those things with you and it will make you the person you are, but you will also realize that they never mattered as much as they seemed to at the time. You’ll get hurt again, you’ll probably hate your job, and you’ll go through hardships and loss that will break you down and suck the breath right out of you. But you’ll still be alive and someday you’ll be able to look back at those things and smile, because out of those things will come life, and experience, and love, and friendships. Twenty years from now when I look back, I want to remember the important things. The bonds I made while dancing until 3 AM with my roommates, or traveling to different states with my sisters, the smiles, the laughs, and the tears, and the stories we’d all tell the next morning after a night of painting the town red. Next year at this time it will be my last semester of college. I’ll be walking to get my diploma with the Class of 2013 and it will not only mark the end of my last final exam ever, but also my childhood. Although that scares the hell out of me and gives me that throat tightening feeling, I’ll embrace the change, I’ll cherish the friends that have stuck by my side, and I’ll dance like everyone is watching.