Remembering

As I walk about Belfast, I'm often struck with how drastically different my life is today, than it was last year.

This time last year, I was miserable. I was studying in Southern France,in a beautiful house with beautiful people and arguably the most beautiful city in the world. Yet every day my goal was just to get the day over with. Because every day, I frantically thought about how my mom was taking chemotherapy, and how I wanted to be back in Nashville sitting on our big blue couch with her, rather than sitting 3000 miles away, and trying to pretend like I was as happy as the other people in my program. They were going to bars, clubbing, dating Frenchmen..and I was going to bed as early as possible every night, to get any relief from the anxiety of knowing that my mom was slowly dying.

In February 2009, I was, ironically, in Belfast. No sooner had I declared to my friend Laura that I knew I'd someday live here in Ireland, than my dad was calling my cell phone to tell me to catch the next flight home. The shops and streets that I walk today in 2010 are the same that I walked last February when I was told that my mom was in a deep coma that they didn't expect her to come out of. These days, I frequently pass the very phonebooths that I used last year in order to phone my dad every few hours, to get updates on Mom's condition.

This year, I could hardly be happier. I spend my nights at the pubs, happily swinging around with my friends to live Irish music, meeting new people who are intrigued by my accent...I spend my days walking about Belfast, hanging out with roommates, going to classes that I enjoy, swimming in the university pool...generally being a young adult with very few responsibilities (which is a strange feeling for someone who's spent the last 6 years as some kind of a caregiver).

All of this to say....I am beyond grateful. Grateful that I've been blessed with the resilience to continue living, continue dreaming. I am not fearless, but I do my best to live as though I were. When I was in France and agonizing over my situation, Allison Stohl wrote me, saying, "Listen to your heart, and don't let fear get in there." I have held that advice close to me throughout the last year. This is a good, good time in my life. Beyond good. This is an impossibly beautiful time in my life, after years of living enslaved to the fear that came with mother (and best friend) having terminal cancer. Even now--10 months after cancer left our family--it still feels like I am breathing in that gigantic gasp for air, after having been choking underwater for years.

It is true that heaven and hell are (can be) right here on earth. Belfast reminds me that last year was real, but that I am in a totally different place today than I was last year. Being in Belfast reminds me of my resilience, and when I walk around this city, passing by those phonebooths where I learned of my mom's imminent death--I can feel my strength.