It had seemed like a dream, and until now: it was a dream. It was dreamed up during a 10 hour hike in Costa Rica with a good friend. In that country, I found the audacity to believe in the impossible, and feel comfortable living in the improbable. My whole life had been improbable, though this experience made me more comfortable with it. Statistically, people like me don't study abroad, they don't apply to UC schools, they don't think about the possibility of being good enough two years of their life living in another country serving others in the Peace Corps. People like me get knocked up, drop out of high school, work in dead end jobs, and treat their kids like they were treated and perpetuate that cycle.
I am an exception. I graduated high school, I have my Associates Degree, I got into UC Davis and I am graduating there soon. I have an amazing record of non-profit organizing, and generally have my shit together. I have always been the exception, but in Costa Rica, I found the courage to aim higher, to not just defy statistics, but to defy my own ideas of how wonderful my life could be. I found a way to ignore all of those voices that kept begging "what if?", and chase my dreams untethered by the bounds of possibility. I have been reassured at several points as I keep achieving what I was never "suppose to" have been able to do: graduating, knowing the people I do, projects I have completed, and the happiness I have found.
Here is my greatest point of reassurance. I just received my Peace Corps packet. I submitted my application, and am working toward an interview. I got fingerprinted, ordered my transcripts and filled out an authorization for a background check. It had seemed like a dream up until this point, and now the paper work and appointments force me to realize that I have arrived.
This isn't exactly a physical place, or any specific event that marks my life. It is more a feeling, like when you see the credits come up in the movie theater after a double feature, or you close a book that took you months to finish: it's that feeling of reawakening, that realization that you had been absent for some time, and now you can get up and begin living again.
My absence began when I was 11. I was a sad little girl. That night was especially wretched with anxious yelling: the deepest kind of anger manifesting itself into a visceral cacophony that filled my house. I had interjected myself into the fighting at this point when I had tried desperately to defend my mother. I had unfortunately also made myself a target. Words and objects flew, sometimes without target, like a large impending disaster, I knew we should be evacuating. But, I was stuck. We were stuck. That night, I knew this was a time I would have to wait out. I sat with a calendar and a calculator and counted the days until I was 18. It was something over 2,000, and I never lost count.
I have lived for that little girl ever since. Every act in my life was to prove to her that I never forgot her pain. I gave until it hurt so no one I knew would ever feel so alone, and I loved more deeply every chance I got to share some happiness with someone. My life was so full of joy to spite all of my pain.
I feel awake now. I feel like the lights have come up and I closed the back cover. I feel like leaving my life behind here, and really starting. I am done living for a vendetta.I have lived behind books telling me nothing changes and the world is full of woe and darkness. I want to see for myself, and prove some more people wrong. I am so ready to GO. I am ready to burst forth, fueled by optimism and compassion, and finally be that change that I have wanted so badly to see. I want to experience life; ride on its pulse. I am so eager to just BE.
I have so much ahead of me, and so much to digest. It has only started.
