Happiness

...is a warm gun. No, Beatles, it's not. It's just my life lately. Wanna know why I'm super happy? No idea. I shouldn't be.

By all accounts, I really should be somewhat depressed.

To be honest, I've been kind of dreading this semester for my entire college career. That awful SPRING semester of SENIOR year. Even the thought could send a shudder down my body in the past three years. That's the semester where I really have to decide on something to do with my life - a decision I may have been avoiding on purpose. That's the semester where if you don't have a boyfriend or ring on your finger, you're kind of in the minority. That's the semester when you have to get it together. 

Coming off a huge high of being abroad in Spain, I'd be lying if I said this summer wasn't hard on me. While it, of course, had its wonderful moments, it was weird. I had figured out who I was and loved that person, but that person was different. It's a hard thing on friendships to go away, experience a huge life-changing semester with other people, only to come back and figure out how you fit in again.

I left an Anna-shaped space behind, but when I returned, I had changed shape myself (ha and yes in more than one way. We've been over the chubbiness phase before). I didn't fit that old spot I left behind. I, who am usually confident, was having an identity crisis and was second guessing myself every turn. I learned a lot about getting through that since last May 5 when I landed back in Chicago for the first time in four months.

And here we are, in that dreaded spring semester. But I'm so stinkin' happy.

I guess something clicked. I looked around me and I was astounded at what a lucky girl I am. I have amazing parents, brothers I look up to, a sister-in-law and girlfriend-in-law (terminology there?) that I really love, a beautiful niece and adorable nephew, indispensable friends and roommates that know me and love me for all my weirdness and quirks, a school where I can be myself, professors that invest in me, a fabulous car in which to zip around, classes that I enjoy, random jobs to make extra money, and a God who shows up everywhere I look. 

Even people whom I thought I didn't like, even strongly disliked, have been proving to me that there is no reason for me to write anyone off...ever. There is goodness within each and every individual, and I find that the second I start to say something negative about someone, somehow it will be made clear that the very person I put down is kind and worthwhile. Once I made a catty comment in the morning and that VERY AFTERNOON I had to eat my words as the same girl I was negative about asked me how my day was and if I was liking my classes.

I don't know. Maybe I'm rambling. But I have to say:

When I'm supposed to be panicking for a life plan, when I'm supposed to be depressed that my awesome college years are ending, when I'm supposed to be over that whole I'm-a-freshman-and-the-world-is-a-wonderful-place phase, when I'm supposed to stop being a hopeless optimist, I just look around and...

I'm not. 

I'm content. While it is a scary world out there, it's a wonderful one too. And I don't say these things to make myself seem awesome - inherent in writing this is saying that I had lots of petty, negative, and pessimistic moments last semester and summer despite my best efforts to remain positive. But what I am saying is that I have been granted peace in a time when I'm supposed to be reeling from the chaos.

And that makes me happy.