distinct memories:

the classroom i started in november of last year, rain pouring down the hard, plastic window, drumming against the roof, the windowsill, and the pavement below. two young girls sitting across from me: one from venezuela, the other from saudi arabia, both the same level that i started in–beginning intermediate, able to form complete sentences but with major syntax and vocabulary issues.

november. two months until it has been a year–and what a year it has been. i've learned so much about myself and the things that i believe in, but i find myself cycling back to nostalgia more often than i want to. "more often than i want to"–but really, what is that? is it such a crime to be sentimental, to be nostalgic? so many of our famous writers and musicians were sentimentalists; the majority of our oral tradition and culture comes from sentimentalism. nostalgia, though, must always be taken with a grain of salt–seeing life through a fog of beautified untruths and taking them as reality generally produces some unwanted results.

smells, sounds, glimpses bring me back to places that i loved being in. i can see the entire room clearly: my purple teacher's book, the TV connected to my laptop, keely's plants sitting in my windowsill, the whiteboard filled with grammatical terms and vocabulary words. in the morning, i have a class full of saudi arabians–20 of them, several wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, cousins–all of whom i can recall without hesitation. my afternoon was filled with a group of beginners–3 husband/wife pairs and one single man, the comedian of my class–and 2 groups of ridiculous college-aged students whose claims to fame were hanging out of a window to snapchat something ridiculous.

and now i think over the past year and i realize i can catalog the things by the students i had during the year and by the company i was keeping. i've been mostly alone for the last 11 months, with the exception of some far-off flings that i have kept at a distance because i realized that i was healing and getting better. at first, the thought of being alone was petrifying: i didn't want to have to deal with myself. and yet now, i crave the time that i spend by myself, filling it with moments and activities that i alone enjoy. i have given myself an opportunity to be at peace with myself and at peace with the world around me, and because of that, my mind is calm.

you–you were a drug addiction, dopamine anonymous. pupils dilated, heart beating quickly, sitting across a table from you at a truck stop eating pancakes. from far away, the landscape looks beautiful, but as i start to walk back through it i begin to see the litter at every step i take. you once said our love story was beautiful, and it may have been, but it isn't anymore. i'm not even sure it was ever even a love story. what about this love story now–is it as beautiful as you had ever wanted? and yet here i am, writing a love story for myself, and how beautiful that feels.

nostalgia and dopamine. thank god for the little graces we bestow upon ourselves, even when they are painful.

"yes, hello self-esteem; we shall finally be free"