and we keep living anyways

...it's been awhile hasn't it.

alright yes, it's been three (nearly four?) years. the last post I put up here, I was in my first semester in college. now, three years later, I've graduated, turned twenty-five, am currently holding down a job as a substitute para-educator, looking into a Master's program and today, just saw my baby sister off to her own college experience in Abilene, Texas.

the past year has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been an easy one. in fact, it's almost universally agreed that by almost any category of definition, 2016 sucked. it didn't even suck for me, personally, but admitting that 2016 was in any way a good year for yourself felt like a betrayal or mockery of the rest of the world. we lost a lot and felt like those bad things outweighed the good things. and that's a hard thing to have to hold, especially when you look into 2017 with dread.

I'm trying not look into 2017 with dread. I'm trying to face it as bravely as I can, even as off-kilter as I am with Julianna gone for the next five months.

Juli and I...well, we're no Jane and Lizzie Bennett. heck, we're barely Lydia and Lizzie Bennett. we've agreed that we're more like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton (there's a million things we haven't done, but just you wait, just you wait...) and if we ever end up on the dueling grounds at Weehawken at dawn, we'll look at each other and agree, well, we saw this coming. but Juli is in many ways, a lot braver and kinder and smarter and stronger than I am, and as much as I worry about her being gone, I want her to have the best possible time at college, which she has waited so long and so patiently for.

 and me? I took one of the lines from Hamilton as kind of a personal motto for the next year. to be honest, a lot of the lines from Hamilton have an incredible resonance for me, but here's one of the more important ones.

in his solo song "Wait For It," Aaron Burr reflects on his life and the choices he's made, how his rival/peer Alexander Hamilton seems to blaze ahead, fearless and reckless. as opposed to Hamilton's lightning fast raps, Burr shakes the rafters with one fierce, blazing stanza: "I am the one thing in life I can control/ I am inimitable, I am an original."  First time I heard the line I sat up straight and played it over and over and over again; it grabbed me by the throat and made me listen. the next lines go, "I am not falling behind or running late / I am not standing still, I am lying in wait." it's hard to go slow sometimes. you look at others and think, why don't I have that, why aren't I doing that, what am I doing wrong because clearly I'm not where I'm supposed to be. so I take a deep breath. I look at what I have done, what I have accomplished. and I remind myself: I am the one thing in life I can control and I will not be afraid. I am willing to wait for it.