so my time in philly has come to an end :)

i started this post at the exact same place i started the trip - a park bench in rittenhouse square.

and then i didn’t finish it. and even now, i still don’t know exactly what to say.

in some ways, everything has changed, and at the same time, nothing.

life has never been more of a question mark, but maybe life will always be a question mark.. maybe the only constant will be making up your mind and then changing it, coming to conclusions and then having the rug pulled out from under you, in one way or another.

i used to think that if things didn’t last forever, it meant that they ended badly. and i used to think that if something did end, it meant that it was gone for good.. almost as if life forgot a “pause” button.

and in some ways it did, because even if we can revisit places, people, and things, we won’t be the same as we were when we were there before. and neither will they.

but maybe they’ll be better.

i used to think that once you found happiness, or found yourself surrounded by butterflies in all areas of your life, that that was it. somehow i thought that once you hit your golden hour, you no longer had room to complain. that your bad days would hit you, but they wouldn’t stick. that you could flinch, but you couldn’t falter.

but in reality..

you can be happy and still get caught in an undertow.

happy people make mistakes and they still end up in darkness. they find success, yet they have days where they wish they could take it all back. because while the world may see someone who has it all, there’s no way to tell what that person is feeling on the inside. in a wierd twist of fate, you can have a bad day and the time of your life.. at the same time.

i recently saw a documentary where someone said, “God allows things to come in your life that feels like [they’re] crushing you because it squeezes out all of the impurities; that’s how you get cleaned in your soul.”

think about it.

and believe it or not, i used to think that there would come a time when i would have it all figured out, when i’d have a roadmap of how my life would progress, and i’d be able to follow it, straight into the sunset. end scene.

instead, i’ve found that we aren’t invincible and life is cyclical. no matter where we are, or where we run off to, we will constantly experience peaks and valleys, never knowing if we’ve hit the lowest low or the highest high.

and yet if we allow it to, time will introduce wisdom to you to help you through it all.

i don’t know exactly when it will happen, but i know there will come a time when i’ll look back on this chapter in my life and find that it shaped me in a lot of ways. for every high high (most of which i shared with you), there was an equally low low (which i didn’t). perspective dictates emotions and how you feel about your memories. the truth that anchors me through it all is that you have to embrace the darkness as much as you do the light. be grateful to people, and show them grace, too.

because at the end of the day, we’re all just people and we’re just trying.

and no matter what, i will always believe in the good.

thank you for everything.

♡