A Full House

Last night felt so normal. We did a "make your own pizza" dinner and I had my friends with their daughters (6, 3, and 1), Survivor, Sporty, and T.S. all here. It was wonderful to be surrounded by the little ones. I just love the imagination and freedom of kids.

This week, I get to spend a couple days with Survivor. She drove in yesterday. She told me the story of the day she dropped me off at the Carswell parking lot. She couldn't drive away. She captured photos of the van taking me onto the base- a photo of my hand held up on the window, saying "goodbye." I guess she cried for the both of us. I was too numb.

Perhaps a year has passed since I've seen my friends, but when we are together, it's like there's been no time at all. We laugh, we share, we still have the deep connection. I'm so lucky to have so much love in my life.

Yesterday, I heard from a friend from my 90's law school days. We are still connected via Facebook and were incredibly close in school. She just read my blog and wrote me a multitude of messages showing her support of me. Even though we've only seen each other 2-3x since our graduation, and now live on separate continents, she will always be important to me. Her friendship was instrumental in helping me survive law school. We would take unexpected long drives to somewhere just to relieve studying tension and cook chocolate chip cookies. We traveled over winter break together and found ourselves often at one another's home hanging out. It's amazing that so much time could pass, but the memories and friendship are still strong.

Today is another meeting with a professor on my campus. It's a department I'm considering to continue my education. I don't expect anything to happen today in terms of decisions, but I hope she'll keep an open mind as I share my story. Even if 40 doors are closed to me, I need to keep on knocking.

Life is feeling nearly normal now. I'm comfortable in my home. I'm starting to get on track with working out, making plans, and enjoying what freedom I have. I don't really know what makes a life "normal," but this is a good life.