"You want to be a writer? Great! Call yourself a writer when people ask you what you do. Put it as your occupation on Facebook. There. Now you're a writer." 

So I've been settling into my parents house, unpacking and redecorating my childhood bedroom. I've had a lot to reflect on since the past year taught me many life lessons. I had some of the hardest as well as the greatest months. Some ideas which come to mind are:

I'm really glad I moved out there. I'm glad my parents let me make that leap of faith. Moving from Connecticut to Oregon to be with a guy who had already broken my heart once and would be away for months at a time with his military job, and not even be living in the same place when he was around, now seems like a ludicrous concept. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and I am surely not the same person who made that decision just 12 months ago. It is important however that I did it. That I fell on my face, got betrayed and became depressed. Why, you might ask? Because now I know that I can follow my heart on a decision, have everything go wrong, and still pick myself up, get out of the situation and end up ok. That is a huge strength that has developed inside me to know that I can try, and fail, and pick up the pieces and try to figure out the next puzzle. 

I have all of these eloquent profound ideas which I emphatically discuss with friends and sometimes strangers, yet the process of manifesting them on paper still proves to elude me.