I have a scar on my upper thigh that was formed from the sharp edge of a machete blade when I was 17. A thin curve of missing cartilage behind my right ear from surgery in the 4^th grade. Three little scars from knee surgery this fall, fresh and red on my right knee cap; smaller in size then in impact on my life. I have misshapen blobs, barely lighter than my skin, all up and down my legs left over from bug bites scratched much too viciously after summertime campfires in the woods. I have bruises and spots and sunburns and scars. Scratches and bites and nicks in my skin.

I’m made up of imperfections. My skin is the title page to the story of my life, a story still gaining chapters and footnotes, a story I’m writing as I live it. Each scar tells a story, each scratch a different tale. The bruises make up who I am, and if you press them hard enough the colors change and the words spill out.

The spot on top of my right hand, still shiny and pink from when I burned it on Mike's oven three days after New Year's catches the reflection of florescent lights as I move my fingers across the keys. Whenever I catch it glimmering I think of overcooked potatoes and laughing so hard that milk comes out my nose.

When I was in high school I spent time every morning in front of the mirror, using makeup to cover up my scars. I’m less ashamed of them now. They hint at all of the things that make me up. They are a visceral and visible proof of the life I’ve lived so far.

When my parents drove me up to Ohio for my freshman year of college we listened to the audiobook of Tina Fey’s Bossypants. In the book Tina tells the story of how she got the scar on her face, and how she judges people based on how long after meeting her they ask about it’s origin. It makes her feel uncomfortable, like it’s the thing people are just waiting to find out the truth about. The only thing that they want to ask.

I want people to ask. I want to tell.

These imperfections are stories. The flaws that make me whole.

I’m a big believer is acknowledging milestones. In taking stock of passing moments and knowing that the continuation of time is sometimes a celebration in itself. I don’t want to take being alive for granted. I hope I never do.

Today was the first day of my second semester at Salisbury. Honestly, not much happened. I only had one class and a few meetings. Life at Salisbury is starting to feel more settled. I like that. I like having a place that 

feels comfortable.

I’m not sure what my expectations are for this semester are. I’m not sure if I want to set expectations. I want to be happy and do well. This could mean straight A’s, but it can also mean being confident and content. I’m happy to leave some room for interpretation.

I suppose I don’t have much to say about the start of this semester, except for recognizing that it’s beginning. 

So here goes. Let’s do this thing. 

I’m a well-known wuss. I hate horror movies or haunted houses or television shows that show dead people or actual dead people or vampires or zombies or poltergeists or basically anything in between.  I’m nightmare prone and basically an anxiety attack waiting to happen.  Which is why it is a Very Bad Thing that I accidently watched an episode of Law and Order SVU yesterday afternoon.  

Some people need caffeine for all-nighters. All I need is 20 minutes of the kind of show that grandmothers marathon like it’s their jobs.

So as I lay in bed last night, staring at the ceiling and picturing all the ways someone could kill me, I came to a conclusion: sometimes having limits is ok. Knowing what you like and what you enjoy isn’t always about being afraid to leave your comfort zone: sometimes it’s about knowing yourself and protecting yourself.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about who I am and who I want to be. The things about myself that make me proud, and the things I want to grow and the things I want to change and develop and evolve. I want to be the best me I can be. A me I’m proud of. I want to do great things and inspire others, but mostly 

I want to inspire myself. I want to be an amalgamation of positive traits and positive energy and positive thoughts.  I want to be happy and comfortable and smart and more good synonyms then Webster himself has to offer.

An accurate representation of me trying to watch a scary movie.

But I want to embrace the negatives too. To understand my limits. To be ok with the bits of me that are a little less than ok. I don’t want to be embarrassed by not being able to handle things. I want to ask for help and not feel ashamed. I’ve never felt bad about giving help, why should I feel bad about receiving it?

I’m scared of letting myself feel vulnerable. But I am. I’m messy and confused and finding my way. I’m afraid of ghost stories and overly emotional and sometimes (or always) I take things way too personally. I’m human.

And if that means I can’t watch Law and Order, so be it. I’ll skip the horror movies so I can sleep and be ok with being a little bit not ok. It’s a process. A hard one, to be a sure, but one I’m working on. Maybe part of growing is realizing that there are times when you can’t grow. 

The house where I grew up is about a two minute drive from a golf course, and from the ages of 4 to 17, every single time it snowed my little brother and I would beg and plead until an adult would drive us over so we could go sledding on hills a little more substantial than the one in our front yard. I was never sure if the couple who owned the golf course loved or hated the small army of children who showed up on their property every snow day, but they tolerated it, and that was enough for us.

I’ve always been somewhat of a scardy cat. Calling me a huge wuss would be rude, though not entirely inaccurate. But I got a thrill from sledding down those huge hills. A kind of pleasure mixed with pain. Numb fingers and toes and hair frozen in braids, with the feeling in my stomach that feels almost like butterflies, but more like lighting bugs- turning on and off in rotations that I don’t understand and seem all the more magical for it.

I’m not sure when snow days  turned from the most exciting thing to ever happen to something that I felt fairly indifferent towards, but I am guessing the switch occurred sometime around when my parents decided I was big enough to help shovel the driveway. The idea that the magical white powder that fell from the sky to make the whole world just a little bit dreamier could be work confused me in the way that only a 13 year old just learning about the indignities of the world could be confused.

The winter of my Senior year in high school my hometown got about three and a half feet of snow. School was canceled for a week and a half and I’m pretty sure that my mother had a panic attack trying to walk our dog, who’s fur blended in to the pile up of flurries pretty perfectly. My brother and I spent two hours every morning shoveling the driveway and never seeming to make a dent. When we came back out in the afternoon, the driveway looked like shovels had never touched it. We sledded out front and drank gallons of hot chocolate, sitting around the fireplace that my mother never let burn out. It felt cozy and warm, and cold and new in equal and substantial measures.

I spent most of New Year’s Eve with my back against a couch as my friend idly played with my hair, sipping cheap wine from a beer stein while listening to mellow music and staring out a big window at the sudden, though not unexpected snow storm.  I watched the ball drop with the TV on mute, and yelled and cheered and raised a glass to the year to come and the year that had passed. The snow outside the window carried on well past midnight. The weather doesn’t care about the new year- the weather doesn’t stand still for something so human as the changing of time.

The irresistible force paradox begs the question "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" What happens if something that literally can’t stop moving meets something that literally can not move?

The view out the window of the apartment where I spent New Year's Eve

Weather is constantly moving and constantly changing. The snow is going to come no matter what is going on in our lives. Snow doesn’t care if you have a job you need to be at, or a party to get to, or a friend to visit. Snow is an unstoppable force. For children on snow days and adults with their shovels. For snow plow drivers and grocery store workers and mayors and shoe shiners- life goes on.

I used to think of my life as a sort of immovable object. I would continue to be and exist, no matter what the world threw my way.  But that isn’t true. I evolve and I move to reflect the world moving and evolving. I grow and I develop and I become different, and that isn’t a bad thing. I change more than the seasons. I develop faster than weather reports and breaking news bulletins. I’m not an immovable object, and that’s more than ok.

So when faced with the unstoppable forces of snow outside of my window, I don’t need to feel scared of the changes it brings. I can feel peaceful and I can feel calm. And I can drink my cheap wine from a beer stein and count down to the new year, and know that life goes on, no matter what changes come my way.