Thoughts of an almost-legal adult:

At twenty-one years of age, I know what it means to be loved.

I know what it means to come home to a family,

and I know what it means to leave.

I know what it means to be a frequent flyer

but I have no backyard tree to come home to,

no tire swing in the garden,

no wall with my height annually marked.

I know what it means to pay my own rent,

I know what it means to upkeep an apartment,

but I don't understand just barely getting by

because I know what it means to have a safety net at all times.

I know how to order textbooks,

but I've yet to learn to sell them back again.

I know what it means to care about a grade

but I don't know what it means to not have an education.

I don't know how to count my blessings,

but I do know how to take things for granted.

At twenty-one years of age, I know how to make friends,

but I'm learning how to keep them.

I don't know what relationships look like,

but my childhood friends are finding spouses.

I don't know what it means to be desperate,

I don't know how to ask for help,

I don't know what it means to be broken and on my knees,

but I'm learning. Oh, how I'm learning.

At twenty-one years of age, I can't identify with the loss others unjustly experience,

but I know how to listen and I know how to care.

Yet I don't know how to talk, and I can't look inside.

I know how to follow and I know how to lead,

I know how to give up and I know how to leave.

What I'm learning most now is how to stay put

and how to stay grounded no matter how long;

to keep my heels dug in the mud and not to let up

even when it goes against my self-preservation methods.

A summer of change, a summer of growth.

My apartment has become my home.

Although the things I've collected since I was a child are currently in Dubai, I hardly have any memories in that house. The city holds no more for me either and I can't remember the person who once used to sit on her chest of drawers looking across the sand lots to the busy Sheikh Zayed Road - pre-metrorail - where the Emirates Towers stood tallest in the skyline. I have grown so much since then yet that girl is still in me. Somewhere.

My family will be officially renting the home we have in Virginia for at least the next year. This means everything must go. While we only spent a few summers in that house and didn't really invest in fixing it up and making it truly ours yet, I have gotten used to its familiarity and it was a comfort to know that it was there even while my family themselves were so far away. Now, I'll know it's there, but being lived in by someone else. The house will be empty to me.

So, my apartment has become my home. Now, I come home to the district after weekends spent gallivanting in New York City - which will be forever magical and an odd sort of solace to me - and retracing steps that my friends have taken away from their own homes.

This summer has held a lot of firsts for me. My first trips to different cities along the eastern coast; attending my first friend's wedding; my first time spending a summer away from my family and coincidentally my first summer with a place to keep coming home to. For all the pain and confusion this summer has brought me, I am ultimately grateful for it. As I can't recognize that girl from the make-shift window sill in Dubai, it's even hard to recognize the person who packed up 615 and moved into 202 only a few months ago.

The beauty of sound

In the 1970s, a Frenchman named Claude Lelouch made a short film called C'etait un Rendez-vous (It was a Date). He made it by strapping his camera to the bottom of his car and driving around the early morning streets of Paris. The film was shot in one take and is just under 10 minutes because that's all that his camera could hold. A few years back, Lelouch allowed the band Snow Patrol to use some of the footage from this film for a music video for their song, Open Your Eyes (off the album Eyes Open). I didn't realize that the footage was from a short film, I just thought it was stock from somewhere random but I just watched C'etait un Rendez-vous today and was struck by how essential a soundtrack really is to a movie. It changes your mood completely. In C'etait un Rendez-vous, the only sound you hear is whatever sound the car makes (and it's quite loud). You feel more stress than you do the calm of an early morning drive, which leads you to think that this driver must be very anxious to get to the person he's about to meet up with. In the video for Open Your Eyes, the nature of the song makes you feel something more of a longing to be with the person at the end of the film, something more dormant than a high-speed car chase through old Parisien streets. Anyways, I found it very interesting so I'd like to share that with you all. I've posted the links to both of the films below so you can experience the difference for yourself and let me know what you

A bientôt!

•C'etait un Rendez-vous

•Open Your Eyes

All this weird beauty thrown right at me

I keep hoping towards some end result that might not even be the right one so I forget the process. I see my current circumstances as means to an end instead of something I should be truly enjoying. I feel like I am entitled to more, yet I am not. I don't even deserve what I have now. Yet God is so good and so graceful. God's goodness is an overflowing fountain. With coke, not water. With manzanita sol and everything better. I am so quick to ask for more and so slow to be thankful for - and even to recognize - what I have already been given. I shouldn't try to commandeer the story God is writing for me, but I should learn to steer and learn to see and learn to thank him for everything He's given me now.

So this is me letting go and letting God. This is me moving on.

This is me with so much more peace than I've experience all year, to be able to look up and say "We have progress," instead of "Houston, we have a problem."

If you could see me, whoever I am.

This is me saying there is no excuse to not live to my fullest extent. I will worship while I'm waiting. Even while I'm waiting, there are still praises to be sung.

Life is truly a series of journeys. We never stop moving, we never stop searching. The moment we stop is the moment we've given up and the moment we've given up is the moment we die. Unless we vow to shut ourselves up in a closet for the rest of our lives, we have a new experience every single day. And even still, some children found a whole other world by walking through a closet once upon a time.

So here's to standing up and looking around. To really taking in the world around me, to seeing the beauty of life that has been placed in front of me. No more ignoring, no more passivity. I'll know my name as it's called again.