high up on my toes

Can I be completely shameless for a moment? Feel free to just ignore this post, because it's all gushy and gross, and this is what I usually try to keep to myself.

It just occurred to me today, and I wrote it to one of my closest friends when explaining how I have been feeling- for the first time in years, in ages, I feel like me.

I know this makes no sense. If I wasn't me all these years, who was I, some fraud? I should hope not. And stranger still, feeling like me does not mean that I feel like I am the same, exact person I once was. On the contrary, the whole impulse to even make this comment had to do with realizing that the person I was some ten years ago was not equipped to do what I am now doing.

Because, see, at the end of every day, even on a day like this, when I have just sat through six consecutive hours of lecture, something will occur to me, some flicker, some spark. Every day, it occurs to me how this all fits, how it makes sense and is important to know and how every part of it is intertwined and, more than anything, how lucky I am to be part of it.

Lucky that I had the chance to do this. Not lucky that I sneaked into it. That, I think, is the strangest, most wonderful thing about coming at this whole strange trip from this angle, that key distinction.

And having said all of that, it makes no sense to say I finally feel like me. But I do. It has something to do with things that were at my very core, things that I thought I lost so, so many years ago, and thought would never return. There was a hint, a few years ago, a little echo whispering inside of me, that gave me hope. It is not an echo anymore. Now it is real, and I am pleasantly shocked that reality, for a change, has surpassed hopes and ghosts and daydreams.