Tribute.

I remember when I was in college, a professor once told me that things don't get easier as you get older. 

My mother tells me often that life isn't about the black and white, but instead about the (often times what feels like an infinite amount) shades of grey.

And so how am I here? At this intersection of having had made a decision I know was right but still difficult and so therefore doesn't feel all that right after all....

I wish sometimes I could look back at when I was 6-years-old and recall how it was I see adults. I wonder if I imagined myself at 25. I wonder if I fulfilled any of those silly dreams I had drawn within myself. I wonder if I'm a quarter of the woman I had hoped to become.

There are times in my day that I feel invincible. Untouchable. Perfect in my imperfection.

And then there are times that to simply exist as I am now seems impossible, as if the universe is poised and ready to tear me apart down to the very last molecule and the only peace I find is reverting back to a time when there was no church or God or political debates 

but rather concrete truths:

The soft folds of my fathers hands on the back of my neck as he carried me to bed.

Taking refuge in a laundry basket full of freshly washed towels still warm out of the dryer.

Swimming the length of our pool on a single breath.

A first snow. A first rain.

Crying into the tail of my mother's dress because she didn't have a napkin.

I wish I could go back and try again, make things right. Make myself better. But time is lost on me and instead I grasp those images as though my life depended on them.

Somehow it always will be.