I dated this guy named Sam in high school (as much as it’s possible to date someone in high school when you have a blanket rule to never ever tell your parents about anyone you’re dating. My parents and I function on a kind of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ system when it comes to my romantic life. What they don’t know can’t freak them out) who was kind of a horrible human being, but had an amazing taste in music. He introduced me to a lot of the music I still love today, including my favorite band- the Mountain Goats.

While Sam and I don’t really speak anymore, the Mountain Goats have been a fairly constant presence in my life. Getting to see them in concert at the 9:30 Club last year was a real dream come true, and one of the better, more exhilarating nights of my life.

The Mountain Goats have a song called ‘This Year’ that I am kind of obsessed with. The song has the band’s sort of trademark pessimistic optimism.  The idea that things are rough, but worth fighting for. That times are hard, but there are good people, and good drinks, and road trips to take, and broken hearts to heal with friends who are with you in the places that seem the darkest.

The chorus of the song goes “I’m gonna make it. Through this year. If it kills me.” and repeats and repeats. It’s more of a promise then a lyric. A hope, a wish, a plea. An acknowledgement that times are hard, and things ca be rough, but the end of the hard times need to come eventually.

I’ve had a crazy year. A year of ups and downs and in betweens. Of some of my highest highs ever, but also some of my lowest lows. A year of things I never want to forget, and things I am trying my very hardest to ensure that I don’t remember.

Last New Year’s Eve I was in Chicago with a couple friends from Hiram, watching movies and laughing and feeling very at home in a strange place with familiar people. I brought in the year with hugs and love and much too much mac and cheese.

This New Year’s Eve I’m going to be in Cleveland, in a friend’s apartment, cuddled in to couches in our pajamas, surrounded by the kind of friends who feel like family. Friends who I’ve only become close with this past year, but friends I can’t imagine how I ever managed without.

I turned 21 this year, and spent the day convinced all my friends hated me and the night convinced I couldn’t have friends who loved me more. Sitting alone on the internet, sitting surrounded by friends with homemade cakes and alcohol bought at a Walmart in the middle of nowhere at 11 pm.

I transferred schools this year. I’m still adjusting, but I think I’m doing ok. I miss my friends from Hiram fairly desperately, but I’m making new friends- good friends- at Salisbury. I’m taking interesting classes and writing for the school paper, and photographing campus events. I’m on the executive board of the Hillel and the Campus Democrats and I’m able to walk across campus and see faces I recognize mixed with the faces that I don’t.

I had knee surgery this year. I had my ACL and my Meniscus repaired, but not before spending months on crutches. I was in a lot of pain for a very long time, unable to walk, and even when I could get around, I was so sore by the end of time attempting to walk from class to class that I would just collapse on my bed in tears. I had rashes from the crutches, and tan marks from my giant brace, and those have faded, and been replaced by three small surgical scars. I’m almost walking normally now. I’m a little bit slow, and stairs are still hard, but I can do it. I can make it.

I took on a new job at camp this summer. The summer was emotional and weird and fun and hard, and so different from any other summer I’ve spent there before. This was my 13^th summer at camp, but it opened my eyes in brand new ways. I worked hard this summer. Really, really hard. I wrote programs and helped staff, and ran from corner of the grounds to corner of the grounds to drop off supplies with an alarming frequency. I made new friends, and spent great times with old ones, I gave an obscene amount of hugs and wore ridiculous coustumes, I did water Zumba with 10 year olds, taught 12 year olds how to make pita, and taught 15 year olds the importance of tradition and culture when it comes to Jewish food. I taught new songs, and led services, and had a summer that was different and exciting. It was hard, but sometimes the hard things are what help you grow.

This year I’ve climbed mountains. I staffed NFTY convention. I worked tech for plays and made friends and write paper after paper and blog post after blog post. I got a new camera, and took pictures that I’m proud of, that I got to see hanging up in friend’s rooms and feel a swell of pride. I’ve written front page stories, and tweeted dumb jokes. I’ve read great books, and horrible magazines. I’ve gone to some really incredible concerts.

I’m embracing the up and the down. I’m embracing the years I’ve lived and the life I lead. I’m embracing this year. Even if it kills me. 

The first time I went on a log flume, I was unaware that I was on a log flume. I was about 10 years old, and some friends had tricked me in to getting on what I thought was a sort of lazy river type deal. I figured we would sit in the log and meander around the path, and maybe go under a little waterfall or two. And we did at first. Until we turned a corner, past where I had been able to see when waiting in line and there was a giant hill. And we were going up it.

I panicked. I started yelling at anyone who could her me to LET ME OFF THE RIDE. But it was too late. We were on our way up.

I’ve written before about how I’m bad at beginnings. Starting scares me. I stared at this blank word document for a solid 10 minutes before I hit a single key. But lucky for me, the beginning is just where it starts- all the adventure is contented in the fall- the everything that comes once you’ve gotten over the butterflies on the ride up.

So we were almost at the top of the log flume, and I wasn’t any calmer. I was more panicked then ever, and my friend sat behind me attempting to calm me down and running her fingers through my hair in a way that was supposed to seem soothing, but mostly felt condescending. I could feel my stomach forming knots and I gripped the side of the plastic tube shaped to look like wood, that I was fairly sure was going to be my watery grave.

No one rides a water slide because of the thrill of climbing all the stairs. Sure the stomach butterflies are fun, and the feeling of excitement to come propels you forward, but the real joy comes from the ride down. From falling.

When people talk about the ‘rise and fall’ it’s implied that the rise is what’s important. The going up, not the coming down. But I’ve never found that to be true.

I’m not saying the fall isn’t scary. It’s terrifying. But it’s also exhilarating. It’s where you test your limits and learn that the fear can be worth it.

We had reached to peak of the log flume. The tipping point. Past where up had turned in to rapidly twisting, and on the edge of where rapidly twisting turned in to a stomach flipping ride down. We were at the point where the fall began. And I had no other option but to go with it.

So we fell. We went down, and the water splashed us and my friends laughed, and I clenched the sides of our log so hard that my knuckles turned  from tan to white to an unnatural shade of purple , but before I knew it I was smiling. And before I knew it the fall was over, and we were peacefully floating to the end of the ride.

I tend to work myself up about… well, about everything. I panic and I fuss and I get caught up in a million what-if’s and maybes. I get myself so freaked out that sometimes I lose focus on the thing I’m freaking out about.

The log flume ended up being fun. My panic ended up being over nothing, and- weirdly enough- it turns out I can trust my friends. I’m not saying that there aren’t things worth panicking about, but I’m saying sometimes we spend too much time focusing on the lead up and not enough on what comes after.

I just finished my first semester at Salisbury. It was hard, really hard, but I did it and I’m proud. Salisbury has been a rough adjustment, but I think I’ve reached the tipping point. The point where the fear turns in to…well, still fear, but fear mixed with excitement. The kind of fear that makes you laugh nervously and anxiously, when you do new things that you’re excited to do. The kind of fear that means you’re doing something a little different then the things you used to do.

I think I’m there. I think the scary has turned to fun. I think I’m feeling good about it. I think I’m excited. 

It was late at night and one of my friends was driving me home from a diner where we had just spent a few hours with a rambunctious group of kids, who I’m sure the wait staff must have hated. He parked his car in my driveway and leaned over to give me a kiss. A minute or two later he pulled away and stared at me. “I think you like the idea of me more than you like me.” he said. I assured him that wasn’t true, but I knew it was.

See, I knew fairy tales before I knew friendship, so I tried to turn people in to heroes, and attempted to map out their character arc. I thought I knew how the story should go, so instead of reading it a page at a time, I needed to skip ahead, to the end of the chapter to make sure that everything was going to come out ok.

Barbed wire fences and white picket dreams were never the things that inspired me. I wanted action and adventure. I wanted princes and princesses and to be the hero of the kind of story that my mother would have read to me before I went to sleep.

But I’ve never been sure if I’m the main character of my tale, or the author, making it up as I go along. Or maybe I’m somewhere in between, creating my life as I live it- shaping the pages of my story as I survive the ups and the downs and the weird in-betweens. But my life isn’t Stranger Then Fiction and most characters are unaware of the work put in behind the scenes that keeps their lives running the way they do.

So I fumble in to the realm of cliché a little more then I’m proud of, and constantly seem to write and live myself in to corners that seem inescapable and plots that seem like dead end drives. I panic too often to be relatable and I’m not social enough for any reader to think I’m going to be fun. I’m trying very very hard, but 

I don’t think I’m ever going to have mass market appeal. I’m never going to be a New York Times best seller, but I’m holding out hope for cult classic. The kind that’s so cheesy you can’t help but like it. The kind so sincere it makes you smile, even when you know it’s lame. Full of weird jokes and strange characters, and the kind of tales that must be fiction, since they’re too weird to be believed. The kind of book that you want to read and reread and share with your friends, and quote in awkward situations.

I guess I’m just hoping my life will be better than the stories I read. More kind and more true, and most importantly more real. True doesn’t mean unheroic or uninspired, it just means more livable. My story is still in motion, there are still chapters to come and characters to be introduced and adventures to conquer.

I’m creating my story. Letting the pages fill up with my life as I live it.

And I think and I hope that I’m doing it well.