We'll Forget the Past, but Maybe I'm Not Able....

2010.

The number seems to glare at me as I type, daring me to forget it the next opportunity I have to write the date. It is something alien, unknown, and indescribably exhilarating.

2009, for me, was a most peculiar year. It offered me some of the most pleasurable and the most painful moments I have experienced in my brief lifetime. The beginning of the year carried me abroad to London, the city I fell in love with and consider my second home. I made friends I will never forget, met celebrities that I actually didn't embarrass myself in front of, and discovered the true delights of independence. I learned more about myself in that semester abroad than I had scarcely realized before, and I would trade almost anything to be there still.

I arrived back in the United States, leaving a large part of me behind in that beautiful country of Shakespeare, and Austen, and Rickman. Only months later I was abroad again, and my whirlwind two-week tour of Italy with Chester Country Voices Abroad was a welcome diversion from the longing I felt for the UK. In the two weeks I spent there with my family, friends, and musicians, I saw the sights I had only imagined when I was younger, finally visiting the country that sparked my interest in travel. The rest summer flew by in a haze of fraps and derivatives as I worked seemingly endless hours in the Barnes and Noble Cafe and continued working on my two degrees during Nova's summer sessions.

I felt overworked and overwhelmed as I returned for my second year at Villanova. I struggled to maintain friendships and survive the torture VSB was inflicting on us all. I grew closer to my coworkers at Barnes and Noble, forging a pair of the strongest friendships I have ever held. I witnessed the near perpetual worry of my family as we continued our attempts to make sense of my Uncle's cancer and my grandparent's failing health. I constantly worried myself with my own flaws, and the way it impacted my family life.

Some of these moments of 2009 I wish I could forget and erase as easily as I could do to my hopeless attempts at balancing the accounting equation. I wish I could take away my family's pain, choose different teachers, or stay in London forever.

Society encourages us to "move on" and let go of the memories that hold us back. Part of me wants to do just that, but something stops me. Do our bad memories truly hold us back, or do they help us move forward with a renewed sense of who we are and what our purpose is? I am inclined to believe the latter.

2009, at times you could be a real bitch, but you also gave me some of the most treasured experiences and friends I will ever have. I will not leave you behind, but will carry the lessons you taught me into the new year. 2010, I have high hopes for you. You will continue to make me better and stronger than I am today. It is my deepest wish that you will also provide guidance and illumination that will help me surpass the worries and fears of 2009 and whatever else may come. Bring it on 2010. I'm ready.

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." (T.S. Eliot)