And then all of a sudden life changes, and things don’t look the same anymore. The landscape is different. You’re crossing bridges and state lines and the cornfields are gone. The coffee tastes different. The people seem distant. I guess you’re starting over.

I realized that I could become whatever I wanted to be in this change. I could either find myself here or I could hide myself here. Finding is a lot more difficult than hiding. But then again, I guess it’s not supposed to be easy. One of my very best friends shared a quote with me as I was packing up to leave Indiana. “Bloom where you’re planted.” Maybe it really is that simple. I’m nearing the end of what has easily been the most difficult year of my life. I’ve had to face things that make my chest ache to even think about. And these things changed me. Tragedy creates such a strange dichotomy. There’s the part of you that wants to love recklessly because you never know how much time you’ll have. Then there’s the part of you that wants to shrink into the smallest version of yourself you possibly can in hopes that maybe life won’t leave you so raw. If I’m being honest, I’m not past that yet. I’m not ready to go back to loving recklessly. It looks different after you lose someone. It looks different when you see that your parents are not ageless like they seem in our minds. It looks different when the people you love most are hurting in ways you can never begin to fathom. “I don’t know nothing except change will come. Year after year what we do is undone. Time gets moving from a crawl to a run. I wonder if we’re ever gonna ever get home.” I guess it’s a lot less about where we’re going and a lot more about how we get there. So tomorrow I’ll get out of bed and I’ll try to love someone just a little bit more. When it comes down to it, I guess that’s all that matters.