I've never been one to share too much about my life on the internet or on social media. Sure, I use Facebook (which I claim to be the "most convenient way of staying in touch with friends", though I'm not sure I really believe in that), and as a visual-type person, I do enjoy sharing and scrolling through Instagram (although I have realized it directly affects my mood in ways I'm not always aware of, also often causing me to feel anxious, joyous, frustrated, puzzled, nostalgic, inspired, jealous, and happy, all within the 5-10 minutes it takes to go through my feed); but I am far from being a social media savvy person, or having thousands of followers. I do, however, have a very supportive and caring family, a hand-picked loving and small chosen-family (a.k.a. friends), and an intricately woven fabric of people who surround my life everyday with little bites of their own. Whether passing through my online feed, or running into each other on the street, every minute shared with these people is deeply valued and appreciated, and it defines who I am and how I change with each passing moment. Intentionally or not, change has always been a constant in my life; I have, or rather still am, learning to embrace it in full, with its ups and downs, with the bliss and the pain. I have also learned from having spent a third of my life as an immigrant (I'll talk more about that later), and from Elizabeth Bishop that "the art of losing's not too hard to master though it make look like (Write it!) like disaster." I have lost count of how many times I felt like the ground had crashed under my feet, and how it felt like I was free falling endlessly (because the feeling of endlessness is what scares me the most about anxiety and depression). But I have really lost count of the lighting-bug moments: the ones that make you smile with your heart, cry happy tears, make you feel warm inside, make you giggle, that light a fire in your eyes, that widen your perspective of yourself and of others; the moments filled with so much joy they make forever seem like a split second. While pain and disaster shape the changes in my life, it is the memory of blissful moments that keeps me going. Though I would love to be able to rely solely on my mind to remember everything, and while I know most people only push "like" buttons and don't do much reading anymore these days...I decided to take Bishop's advice to write it! not because I am a writer, or because I think my writing is great or anything, but because writing is cathartic and requires vulnerability. If I keep everything in, I'm afraid it may keep me from honoring the thread I carry from previous adventures, and thus from moving forward and taking leaps of faith. What is life if not trusting the unknown?