Today I Saw Hope

Tonight I lay here in this apartment that feels like my home, in a city that has made me who I am, after a day spent walking through showers of falling leaves, wearing scarves and jackets and gloves, eating at old time favorite restaurants, running into people I know in the streets of downtown, running errands with Nick, and just living, living and breathing and feeling... more than I've been able to do in a long time. Today was one of those days that inspired me again, that I could look around at this fabulously beautiful city and know that this is where my heart is and has always been, knowing that this city is where I truly belong, where I fit, where I feel my best, where I feel "home." It's taken me a very long time to get to this place in my life where I can honestly answer that question that I used to hate so very much, "Where are you from?" I would honestly answer that question now, knowing that when I say Portland, Oregon, that is really my home, really the place that is all my own, a place that I moved to when I was just 18 and a place that shaped these last 5 years of my life totally. I would answer that question like this, "I am from a city with more bridges than freeways, a city that you can get anywhere walking downtown in 20 minutes, a city that has the most beautiful fall foliage you've ever seen, the best blankets of snow in the winter, the most beautiful blooms in the spring and the most fantastic color green you've ever seen in the summer. It's a city that many in the world have never been, but a city that people fall in love with. It's a place that I call home, a place where my dearest friends are, the place that I learned to love and to live on my own. It's the place that I saw grow up around me these past few years. It's a city where you run into people you know all the time and where the environment truly is always put first. It's a city that has plug in stations on the side of the road for electric cars, solar powered parking meters and countless recycle bins. It's a place that makes feel the most like me, it's the place that I know I belong. It's home."

Many in my life would think right now because I don't particularly like living in Hawaii and that everything that has happened since my move in June, that I regret taking that chance, making that change. But in fact, the opposite is more true. I don't regret leaving Portland at all, I don't regret needing to make a change, I don't regret moving away from Nick, because I have learned numerous priceless lessons and countless questions to hard questions that I had been asking myself for a very long time. I needed to move away to realize what I had here, I had to leave in order to find out where my heart really was. I had spent my college years here, loving it, but also dreaming of where I would end up. I've spent my entire life trying to figure out where I belonged: was it the part of me that grew up in a foreign country or was it the girl that spent her adolescent years on Oregon? I struggled so much with where I was from, with what part of me I was going to become and I found the answer through a few months of changes, experiences and most importantly, through faith. It took me about a month after leaving to realize a few very important answers to questions I needed to answer for myself.

I realized that first and foremost, while I still have that part of me that's the little half-Saudi, half-American girl inside of me, I am an Oregonian through and through. I call Portland home, and while I may not live there forever, while I may go out and experience other places all over the world, I will call Oregon my home, I will always come back to this city that I love so very much and will feel at peace here, I will feel right here, I will find solace in this place. There is no other place in the entire world that I feel more comfortable, that I feel more like myself and no other place that I can take one look at the city and I am breathless because this city holds not only so many precious memories, but vast hopes for the future.

In realizing that Portland will always be home, I also realized that the relationship I had left there was still more important to me than I had given it credit to be. I had gotten so caught up in all that was happening, graduation, the thrill of someplace new, a new career, a new life, that I forgot to realize some of the most important things in our lives: love, faith, family, peace, friends, trust, loyalty, and faithfulness. And out of this change, Nick and I have grown separately and together in the most amazing way. And while it took me a very long time to get to this point in my life, I know that there are moments when we will fight, moments when we'll disagree, but all in all, I don't want to go through that with anyone else. This separation has made us both realize, very independently of each other's decisions, that we want to be together, that we want to go through life's moments together and ultimately, what we feel is true, honest and happy.

To say that the past 5 months have been an emotional roller coaster would be an understatement. And there are nights when I cry myself to sleep because I feel so helpless, so unable to make a change, so discouraged at what has been presented to me as to what the world is like. And never in my life have I felt more naive, more unaware of what goes on in our world and what horrible people are out there. My mentor and teacher told me last week after a wonderful and very encouraging phone call, she said "that while these wrong things that people do are indeed very wrong, we must endure it. But we must always know ourselves that while we must endure it, they are not okay." It's people like her, like Nick, like family and friends that spoke those words of encouragement and understanding.

And it's days like today, when a decision I made on a whim was perhaps one of the best decisions I've made in a very long time, that cleared my mind, that gave me hope, that gave me faith. The past month I have felt so lost, like all faith had been lost, all hope gone but today I stood at the Riverfront, and stared out across the bridges, at the falling sheets of leaves, at the beautiful place where it all began for me. This was after all the place I fell in love, the place I stayed my first night alone in my first apartment, the place where I made some of my first real decisions about life, where I've met friends that will be in my life forever, where I graduated college, where I've celebrated with friends and family and cried with friends and family. This is after all the place where, when I first moved here, used to take the streetcar down to the riverfront and sit for hours on a park bench over looking the river, under the cloudy overcast sky, with gloves and scarves on, and listen to music and just write. I would write about the day, about the world, about my future, about falling in love, about the city, about life. And today, I stood there again, in that same spot, and suddenly I knew, that the things that I always believed in still do exist, I might just have to work a little harder to get them. I stood there and realized that I am still that girl, writing about love and life and faith, that I am still that girl with dreams. And while those dreams may have changed from what they used to be, they will come true someday, I will make sure of that.

I stood there today in my spot, in the spot that used to make me feel so whole, so alive and I felt it again today. Somehow this time of year, this city and that spot make it all come true for me, and I saw hope today. I saw faith returning and I can't wait to see what comes next.