(This song was on a mixed CD from a good friend. I really really like it. And the music video is beautiful.)
I really like beginnings, and hearing about beginnings. I find them to be the most exciting part of any relationship or experience. But I feel like my life has been comprised of mostly beginnings and not much else of anything. I long to feel familiar with something, for once. What I mean is this: I have always played sports, and I have moved around every couple of years my whole life. So I have never been on the same sports team with the same people for two seasons in a row. In the autumn of my junior year of high school, I was ecstatic because I finally was able to return to a sports team (cross country) for the second year. Everyone was familiar: I knew the coach, I knew the uniforms, I had memories with the team, and I knew what to expect. The same thing happened with swimming, although admittedly the swim season wasn’t the same without certain people from the year before on the team.
I liked the feeling of nestling down into the spot in the mold that I had left for myself earlier. But just because I’ve found familiarity in some aspects of my life doesn’t mean I’m completely settled. I’ve moved out of my house and I now live in an unfamiliar apartment in an unfamiliar part of town. It’s unsettling, sure, but I can’t help wondering if maybe I crave this displacement, even if it’s just a little part of me. It doesn’t matter what I want, though, because my life is literally about to turn upside down. I hate to use cliches :/ In about 110 days, Columbus will no longer be my home. My family will pick up as soon as possible after my graduation and relocate to Hawaii. I’ll have a home to come back to but it won’t be the home that I remember. I’m not necessarily shaken by that fact, since I didn’t grow up with one specific childhood home, but it’s a little bit startling to know that there will be nothing to bring me back to this town 110 days from now. Nothing practical, I mean.
But I’ve gone off on a tangent. I meant to talk about beginnings. I started thinking about beginnings when I was um, Facebook-stalking people I know of, but don’t know that well. There are two girls, who are in a relationship. Engaged now, apparently. They’re both very devout Christians as well, and all these facts combine to form a pretty unlikely image. For southern Georgia, at least. Am I wrong? Anyway. I’m really happy for them. Really really happy. Because if you can find someone in the world who makes you happy, that’s awesome. Who am I to stand in your way?
What seems almost surreal about this is that I was there when they met (I am under the assumption that they met at this time) in a class that we had together two semesters ago. No, now that I think about it, they probably hung out in the same crowd, but I guess they just didn’t really get to know each other until this time. Whatever. All that’s important here is that they were not together in January, and then in May, they were. And I saw it happen. One day they were holding hands in class. I made a double-take, just because I was surprised. Maybe they’re just really good friends. But they would get closer and closer, and after class they would walk along the hallway holding hands. They were definitely together. And now they’re planning forever together. Something about reflecting on beginnings makes me feel small. Like, why couldn’t I see that coming? Did anyone really see that coming? It’s amazing how everything seems so predictable, so out in the open, when analyzed in retrospect. I like to re-read my journals from the past and think to myself wow, I had no idea that a year from then, I would be doing this. I had no idea that the next day I would meet this person who changed my life. I thought I had nothing to look forward to. I guess this is just proof that you really don’t know what’s coming. You don’t. And there’s no way of knowing. Reality almost never aligns with your expectations perfectly. But I feel like there’s some kind of security and stability in the assurance that you don’t know how everything is going to turn out. I don’t know where I’ll be one year from now, who I’ll be friends with, or what kind of projects I’ll be involved in, if any. It’ll all just unravel with time. The future will reveal itself little by little.
I wish I had more to say.
And I wish I knew how to insert music into my posts without having to post youtube videos.
Well Begun is Half-Done 