Hello December

A year ago today, I took off in a plane departing from a place I was not ready to leave. As the planes engines fired and the slow stroll down the runway turned into the lumbering pace that lifted us off the ground, I glimpsed the Costa Rican landscape for the last time, not knowing if I'd every see it again, and could not hold back my tears. This place represented an escape I desperately needed from my normal surroundings in which a pattern of self-sacrifice and personal isolation had taken a toll on my spirit. Everything in my life was so serious that I didn't remember what it meant to laugh or feel joy. Joy found me again there, thanks to some remarkable classmates and professors and the national mantra: pura vida. However, leaving as abruptly as circumstances required me to made it difficult for me to believe that that joy would come home with me. A year later, I marvel at how much I have been through and how my three months abroad remain so close to my heart. I have fought for that joy in the face of the trials that have riddled the last twelve months, and it has been worth the fight. I feel more resilient, as if I have recognized the importance of joy and laughter because I lost them at one time. All that I have been through in the last year, although not always fun, has burnished my character in a positive way. PTL.