Where I Am Now: A Life Update

It’s been a while since I posted here, and so much has changed in the time that passed.

As I’ve recovered from my injury (which is now fully healed), graduated high school, and processed the reality of growing up and leaving home soon, my journal has been filled with more messy thoughts than I can keep up. One day, I hope that I can share all of those thoughts with you. Right now, I’m just overwhelmed about where I should even start.

For now, I will give you a summary that ends with where I am today.

The last three months of my senior year were some of the longest and shortest months of my life. It was a mix of trying to hold onto every moment while also wishing that it could all just pass already.

It was mourning the loss of my last track season while also mourning the loss of my childhood.

It was realizing that things would never be the same again. It was wanting things to either move on already, or to go back to the way they were before. It was wanting to be anywhere but the present, but also savoring the present more than anything because it was all that I had left of high school.

It was suddenly realizing just how much I would miss. With my track season–which I had imagined would be the highlight of a difficult senior year–cut short because of the broken bone in my foot, I often found myself counting down the days until graduation.

It wasn’t until the final weeks before graduation that I realized all that I would miss.

As salutatorian of my graduating class, I was asked to give a speech at the ceremony. When I was writing the speech, I realized that I hadn’t been thankful enough for the opportunity to go to a Christian private school. During my injury, I saw my schoolmates show up for me in ways that allowed me to experience God’s love in a new way. Really, my thought process around my time there mirrored my thought process around my injury (and I’ll quote from my speech):

“…right before the first race of my senior track season, I fell and broke the fifth metatarsal bone in my foot. One misstep, and suddenly my entire senior track season was taken away. It wasn’t until this injury that I realized how much of a gift it is to be able to run at all.

The injury, though difficult to experience, taught me a lot about gratitude. Not just that I should have been more thankful for what was already lost, but that I should be more thankful for what I currently had.

And at that moment, I realized that I had something priceless: a community that would support me…

Just as I didn’t learn just how much running meant to me until I got injured, I didn’t learn just how much this school meant to me until came the time to leave. And that time felt sooner than I expected.

On the last day of school, I had many of you sign my polo, and it then hit me that I would never wear it again. I returned my chromebook, and it hit me that I would never have to come back for another one. I drove home, and as I left the campus parking lot, it hit me that there would never come another morning that I would have to drive in there again.

We celebrate graduation because it marks the time for change. For four years, life often felt like a bit of a rut, full of wishes that we could snooze past our alarm or that we could have more free dress days. But in many ways, even the consistent wake-up time and the consistent uniforms were a physical representation of how, for four years, our lives were stable…

Change is bittersweet, but the bitter parts are what allow us to realize how much the sweet parts mean to us.”

Really, that summarizes my life right now. It has been full of change. But the change has led me to more gratitude. One lesson that my senior year has taught me is that everything in life is a gift.

Right now, I am trying to make the most of all of life’s gifts. As I prepare to leave San Diego, the city where I was born and raised, I am reminded that my time there too was a gift. It too is something that I will miss. And although I always imagined myself leaving for college, that too is something that has come sooner than I expected.

I am leaving home because I will be attending Corban University, a small college in northwestern Oregon. There, I will double-major in clinical kinesiology and biomedical science on either a pre-physical therapy or pre-medical track (My injury made me more passionate about my major choice–more on that another time).

And although my senior track season was cut short, I am thankful to announce that my track career is not over. Before my injury, I was recruited to run for Corban’s cross-country and track team. And although I had not signed or even committed to Corban yet, when I told their coach about my injury, he promised that still had a spot on the team for me, and he then prayed for me.

That was something that helped solidify my college choice. Among all the colleges that I applied to, even the other Christian ones, only Corban’s coach asked about my testimony. The others only cared about my PRs. I realized that Corban’s athletics department would see me as a story instead of just a number.

For that reason, I already had a feeling that Corban might be where my story would continue. But what solidified the choice even more was an email that I received on the very same day that I fell and broke the bone in my foot.

Several months earlier, I had applied for a scholarship competition based on academics and leadership, with the top-tier winner receiving a full ride. On that day, Corban emailed me to let me know that I won the full-ride scholarship.

Getting an athletic scholarship (even a small one) to run for a college in Oregon (even a small one) is something that my younger self would’ve never believed. But winning a full ride is another surprise entirely (And I’m thankful that my scholarship now depends on grades only, as I’ve been a lot better at maintaining my GPA than good health, haha).

I have already said that everything in life is a gift. This college opportunity especially is a very large gift, and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds.

But right now, I am in an unusually difficult, but also especially sweet and notably short-lived, stage of my life. It is the stage between high school and college. It is my attempt at reflecting on my past while also preparing for my future.

I am not used to saying good-byes, but this summer has been full of them. And good-byes are hard. I’ll confess that I cried while giving my salutatorian speech.

Yet I have learned to be thankful for even the opportunity to say good-bye. At least then I know when the end is coming. At least then I know to make the most of the days that I have left.

I found myself crying at another moment, not at a good-bye, but a lack of one. Soon after my injury, I drove past the track where my conference always competed in our league meets.

Seeing that track again made me cry.

The funny thing is, that track used to always be an inside joke among my runner friends–too many bad memories of melting in the sun during our meets.

But there I was, crying. I cried because that one track held too many memories. The sport in general held too many memories. I had been competing for the same school, in the same conference, for six years.

I cried because I never got to say good-bye.

But then I came back to that same track to watch my teammates and friends in the final conference championships. There, I finally got my chance to say good-bye. I didn’t think I would be ready.

Yet as I stood under the stadium lights that night, looking at the track through the fence while the sky above faded from blue to orange to black, I realized that I was ready.

Sure, this championships meet was nothing like what I once expected. In the preseason, I had always imagined that I would actually run in the meet, of course.

Throughout the whole spring, I found myself wishing that I could go back to the preseason right before, back to when it was Christmastime and I was still seventeen and I felt more like a kid than a graduate, back to before my injury, back to when the sky felt full of infinite possibilities and I could still dream.

But that night at the championships, I let myself accept what had happened to me. I learned to be thankful for the memories that the track and this sport held. And I finally said good-bye.

At that moment by the track, the sky seemed to open up. It was full of possibilities again.

And I could finally dream again.

That’s where I am right now: under an open sky full of dreams.