The pieces are set; it’s all in place. You seldom get this feeling. Most people search for it all through their years. Then, one day, like I have, they stumble upon days that feel like this: the pieces are set; it’s all in place. Everything is as it should be. It is a beautiful world, time has never felt more abundant, and things are going as they should, for better or worse. I stand on my balcony and stare at the breathtaking view ahead of me. I do this in the morning, and I do it in the evening, and even when I do it every day, it does not seem to change how novel, how fresh it feels. Laughter with the people I love and would continue to want to live for is the only major priority. I drown myself in all life has to offer, and in doing so, I learn to swim through the river of time. I must continue to be here; I must continue to live; there is so much more to do and feel; I have only just begun. Only one proclamation echoes and pulses through my heart: I must keep my eyes wide open. All else will fall into place. I am infinitely in love with life, so much so that I am willing to be destroyed by it. It is the only way I know how to love. My guard is down. I am alive.
This year appears to have changed me on a molecular level because no matter where I look, I cannot find my old self. I wonder, no, I am sure this is happiness. This is the happiness that arrives and softly knocks on your door when you come into your own, when no part of your body or mind feels foreign. For the first time in the quarter of a century that I have been here, I believe I am meant to be here. There is no greater feeling, nothing else a person aspires to. All of us only want to wake up in the morning and know, deep in our hearts, that we are not trespassing and are, in every capacity, supposed to be here. I cannot promise it will always be this way; I can’t promise that to you, or myself for that matter, but I am privileged to have felt this, even if for what feels like an infinite moment, even if it is that, and even if it is a glimpse in the montage of time. I have lived to say I belong here; nothing compares.