2014

I sat down to write this post, tucked into a strange bed in a strange city, with the noise of boyish voices floating in from down the stairs, and I realized that this year has been so full, so heavy, so pregnant with blessings and beautiful brokenness that it's taken my breath away.
And they always say that it's darkest before the dawn
2013 was a year of hard, and heavy. I didn't think I would survive it. I didn't know if I wanted to.
That's something no one talks about, right? How sometimes the night is so black and the air so thick and everything so heavy that there is this moment, or these string of days, when you don't even want to survive.
But if I learned anything in 2014 it's the value of honesty, and how hiding from my own story, even the messy parts that make me cringe, only makes things worse.
2014 was the year of brutal honesty.
There were moments when I stood face to face with the girl in the mirror, with the ghosts of my past. What I saw there shook me to the core.
I learned to speak the truth. About my past, about who I am now, about my family, what I believe.
I learned that sometimes it's ok to walk away, and how sometimes you have to.
My friend asked me the question of what dates in 2014 will remain etched in my memory. And some days I remember, like graduation day, and my first day of college.
But others are more subtle, moments that have sunken deep into my mind. Moments like that weekend I spent alone with my brother camping, or those final moments after my last exam in high school when I knew I would be walking out of those doors for the last time. Lunch dates at coffee shops where everything changed, and I went to learn about college but for the first time I remember feeling unconditionally loved. I remember meeting this guy in a mall and we talked about writing and one comment he said still rings in my ears. And the wedding of my oldest cousin, my for longest best friend, when I cried only happy tears and just a little. I remember the trembling nervousness on that first day of college. Water/mud fights with buckets and shrieking and how after we all dried off we went for coffee. That moment when the past seems to repeat itself, when the boy from the poems becomes the boy who built glass castles inside of rib cages, and how in the split second of him walking away the glass castle crumpled and the aftermath is every truth I've spent my whole life running away from. How I spent my 18th birthday with Emily eating ice cream and laughing and bowling with oranges and salt shakers. Late nights and letting people in and playing cards and learning how to play pool and moments where my heart felt so full it nearly burst.
2014 was a good year, a hard year, a year of being put back together and my heart swelling.
I'm always a bit nostalgic about endings, even though I know that this isn't really an end. It's a fresh start, and God knows I need one. It's a chance to begin again, and again and again.

I won't run when bullets chase me,
I won't rest where arms embrace me,
I will love when people hate me, I won't hush, no you can't make me,
send the dark but it won't break me, 
you can try but you won't change me,
Take my life they will replace me,
I won't hush, no you can't make me, I won't hush, no we will sing
Where are we going? Oh I don't know, but still I've got to go. What will become of us? Oh I don't care, all I know is I'll go anywhere.
Pioneer