I started 2015 comfortable. On the floor of an apartment in Manhattan, in my pajamas and under blankets and with one of my best friends and pizza and the ball drop on TV. We stood on the balcony in the cold and watched people stumble, drunk and happy, up 2^nd avenue after the clock struck midnight.

I spent 2015 scared. In New York and in DC. In Maryland and Massachusetts. Not always, but enough that I felt like I had something lurking in the back of my mind pushing me forward. The fear of stagnation can be a powerful motivator.

I’m ending 2015 cautiously optimistic. This year has felt like a year of development; new places, new people, starting my senior year of college, starting to make choices about where I want to go and who I want to be--- next year feels like a year of action; college graduation (finally), a job (I hope!) and all the new and scary things that come with starting the next stage of everything.

This has been a long year and a strange one, and one that I’m still processing. It feels like a year where I grew a lot, but also a year I realized how much growing I still have to do. A year where I made some good changes and also stalled out in some places, and through the mix-mash of 365 days, came out the other side still looking up.

I want to leave some of my fears in 2015. My fear of never living up to my own expectations or the expectations of others; that only makes me put unhealthy pressures on myself. My fear of rejection—I get so scared to reach out to other people when I need them that I suffer through in silence, even though rationally I know that there are people in my life who would love to hear from me. My fear of the future, and the ways that it’s unfolding, no matter how prepared or unprepared I feel.

I want to bring some of the things I’ve discovered about myself in 2016. My willingness to try new things and my willingness to go new places. My bleeding heart and my open mind. The things I’ve learned, and the things I have been conscious of needing to learn more about. The friends I’ve made in all of the places I’ve been, and all the places I’ve been where I’ve begun to learn a little more. I’ve found a lot this year. And I’m proud of that.

This year I’ve climbed mountains. I’ve sung songs around campfires and taken long bus rides where I’ve done nothing but listen to the same song on repeat for hours at a time. I’ve written words that I’m proud of and words that rereading makes me cringe. I’ve gotten good report cards and done horribly on biology tests. I’ve taken photos that I’m proud of, and spent much, much too much time with my head in the clouds. I’ve read a lot—fiction and non-fiction, long-form and newspapers, articles from friends and books my grandma sent me in the mail. I’ve gone to concerts and Broadway musicals and high school talent shows. I’ve tried new things, and not always liked the things I’ve tried. I’ve gotten better at saying “yes,” despite the fear and at saying “no,” despite the disappointment.

I think I’m ready for a new year. I’m not caught up in the idea that a new year is a new start, but it is a new milestone. I’m ready to carry over. To take all the things I’ve done and make them more. Make them bigger and better, and different in the ways I want them to be different.

So here goes. Here goes another year of all of that. Of the curiosity and the anxiousness and love and fear and all the emotions in between. I’m ready to feel (and experience) them all.

Here is where I am.

It’s a studio apartment on the Upper East Side with a big bed and an inflatable mattress on the floor and piles of boxes lining the wall. I can hear the neighbor’s television, and it makes me so self-conscious that I’m afraid to turn mine on.  The water pressure in the shower isn’t great, but the hot water seems to last forever as I stand under the stream and get caught up in my own brain. There is a cabinet full of mismatched dishes and a stove and two pans and a fridge with enough food to fill a single shelf, even though I continue to sustain myself solely on handfuls of carrots and spoonfulls of peanut butter. It’s two blocks from a grocery store and one block from a CVS and six blocks from the synagogue where I’ve worked all year. The wi-fi works most of the time. 

Here is where I am.

It's a highway somewhere between New York and DC and it is foggy enough that in the front row of this beat up Bolt bus I can only see a couple cars ahead. The outlets only work on the left side, and the boy sitting next to me is listening to Kanye on his phone. I've got the Wombats on—I always have the Wombats on. Every seat is taken, and when I look down the aisle I can see heads bobbing, people half asleep or fully asleep or wishing they could fall asleep. I’m idly scrolling through Facebook on my phone, staring at faces of people in the place that I’m leaving and the place that I’m headed to and all the places in between. It is 2:30 in the afternoon, but time is kind of meaningless on a six hour, middle of the day bus ride, except for in how slow it passes.

Here is where I am.

It’s a bedroom that feels like it hasn’t grown up in a dozen years, even though I feel like a completely different person than who I was the last time I inhabited it. The walls are two shades of purple and there is a magnetic strip on the wall holding up photographs and awards and notes written by people who were once friends and are now just a little more than strangers. There are boxes here too, ones I shipped from Manhattan, full to nearly bursting with t-shirts and books and hair ties and blankets. My life sealed up in cardboard, waiting to be unpacked.

Here is where I am.

Somewhere in between “Here is what I have done” and “Here is what I am going to do.” The middle of “Just started” and “Almost done.” That weird stage of transition. After point A and before point B. Twenty three and confused… kind of like every twenty three year old ever.

I’ve got this strange habit of looking at my life like it’s a story. A book with a set beginning and end and chapter breaks and a cast of characters that carries all the way through.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about those chapters lately. The end of one and the beginning of another. It feels so final. So concrete.

But here is the thing about a good story. A good story flows together. Bits and pieces carry over from chapter to chapter. Past experiences shape future ones. The chapter ending doesn’t mean the book is ending. The story still goes on.

Here is where I am.

Moving, still. Developing and growing. Trying harder to do the things I couldn’t do yesterday. Being a new me, a different me than the me I used to be. 

Tonight I sat in a sanctuary and listened to a man tell the crowd gathered there about how his entire family died. About how his hometown died. About how his entire life changed during World War II.

I sat with some of my 7^th grade students, who had taken part in the ceremony that evening. It’s Yom Hashoah right now. From last night’s sundown to tonight’s. A specific day that Jews take to memorialize and remember the Holocaust and the effect it has had on our people’s past and our people’s present.

I thought about being a sophomore in high school and hearing Elie Wisel speak at St. John’s college in Annapolis. How he told us about his life and the horror he had seen. He answered questions in a thick accent and I sat in the back of a room with maybe a hundred people, unable to comprehend the things that he had been forced to face.

I thought about the woman I met in Poland, who spoke with my high school group about her time in Berkanu. We were 16 and away from home and on a trip where we spent an entire week learning about the Holocaust. Reading ‘Night’ on the bus rides and moving between ghettos and shuls and museums and cemeteries. Crying a lot and holding hands, and feeling chills from the cold and from the sheer weight of what we were learning.

My generation is going to be the last generation to know survivors. To hear harrowing stories from the people who lived them. It’s our honor, and our duty to keep those stories alive.

My seventh grade students sat more quietly then I have ever seen them. They listened. They took everything in. At the beginning of our ceremony, spread around the room and holding yahrtzeit candles, they had read the names of children who had died in camps. The names were in Polish and German and Hungarian and French. They were young—two or twelve or seven or ten—and as my students read the names in a silent room full of people, I know that they understood the burden of our people’s history just a little bit more than they had before.

The Jewish people have a unique story. It’s full of tragedy and horror and but also survival. Of life, in the face death. Of remembrance. Of history. Of carrying on when no one really thought we could.

It’s our burden and our privilege to tell our stories. To make sure they live on. Just like our people always have.

“Let's dance to joy division

And celebrate the irony

Everything is going wrong

But we're so happy!”

There is no zoom used on this I WAS ACTUALLY THAT CLOSE

The room smelled like sweat and alcohol, and I had a perfect window view between the shoulders of the two taller girls in front of me. I was three rows of people from the stage, two if the crowd danced right, and if I wanted to I could have reached out and touched it. The band—my favorite band—was playing old songs and new songs and my favorite songs in the world. I danced and shouted the lyrics and jumped around on a floor sticky with spilled beer. The friend who was with me had taken an 11 hour bus ride down from Ohio for this. This weekend and this show. These songs we’d song the lyrics to together for years. It was a good feeling being there. It felt so good that I couldn’t really believe it was real. 

I think I uttered the phrase “Is this really happening?” a couple dozen times. I’m still a little bit in shock.

The Wombats!

I’ve written a few times about my love for the Wombats, and their song Let’s Dance to Joy Division in particular. It’s been my anthem for half a decade; a song so wrapped up in the memories of senior year of high school late nights and junior year of college dance parties and gap year panic attacks. A song that weaves like a thread through so many of my friendships and fondest times. It means the world to me. And I got to shout the lyrics as the band played it live.

Post-concert subway station selfies

I’ve never been a person who is short on words. I pride myself on my eloquence, and I haven’t met a moment that I won’t try to spin in to a metaphor, but some things need to be experienced to be explained. Some things don’t make sense unless you live them. Unless you’re knee deep in the emotions of the moment and you know, you know, that this isn’t a moment that you’ll be able to explain in a weeks’ time.

I felt overjoyed. I felt alive and rambunctious and ecstatic and free. I felt so deliriously happy that it didn’t seem real. I’m still floating a little bit.

It was a great show. A great show and a great night. I’m lucky to have experienced it.