22

My twenty-second year was one of my hardest. Maybe it was the hardest one.

I entered the year wondering who I was - unsure of my future, my talents, my passions, my body.

I felt that I was beginning to grasp myself more firmly when the whole world came to a standstill. I learned that I can feel two thi

ngs at once. I can both feel self-assured and strong and like the smallest, smallest version of myself.

Through the pain of uncertainty that I felt, I learned how to run. I had the distinct pleasure to slowly watch the land that I lived in grow and change. Wake up. I spent time with my family in a manner that I hadn't been able to in years.

I spent so many nights and weakly cold spring afternoons laying on the floor of my small childhood bedroom in underwear that I have had since the eighth grade, crying until my eyes were nearly swollen shut. You wonder what I

cried for? Nosey you! I will tell you that I cried for the loss of things that I was not ready to say goodbye to. I danced to Dua Lipa until my legs shook and I had forgotten my sadness. Then walked down the hall to dinner, calling for my cat.

My April was the cruelest month. An allusion that I cringe to make, it has been overused, but this line ran through my head many times this April. Each day, I pulled back the curtains hoping for sun to find rain.

I shouted Emily Brontë's "No Coward Soul" into an empty field on a run that made my ears hurt. No one heard me but the blue birds that I fancied myself as having befriended.

In May, I graduated from college in my backyard. It didn't feel so bad at all. I had mourned the loss of my school months prior. My family was all that I wanted that day.

In June, I hiked my first Adirondack High Peak. We emerged on the summit to find ourselves in a proper blizzard with no visibility. Exhausted, we ate our peanut butter and jellies hunched behind a boulder. Trying to laugh as our faces slowly froze into grimaces against the wind. A burger and a beer at base camp never tasted so good.

In July, I moved to Brooklyn. I met someone. I bumped my shin on my A/C unit while moving in so hard that I had a deep bruise for a week and a half. I ran with my neighbors down Eastern Parkway to Prospect Park.

In the fall, I began to teach. I doubted myself. I found myself warming to the small faces that say, "Ms. Pietrow?" I cried at the kindness they showed me. I cried at their poor behavior. I fell in love. I found the strength that I had always had in myself. I turned 23.