Returning to Myself

B"H
Lightning spears through the night sky, and thunder's boom follows. I hear the hiss of rain hitting the roof. The smell of whole wheat challahs baking in my sister's oven fills her apartment. I lift my hair off the back of my neck with one hand, while I cradle my nephew's small body with the other. It has been a quiet day, now coming to a quiet close.
It hasn't been easy, regaining my equilibrium. First, the craze of leaving, the late nights spent cleaning and packing, the days in school dreaming about what had to be done. The traveling followed, three days of hauling my luggage around, running to get money, trying to figure out what the next stage of my journey would be, and how I was going to get there. And then being here, in my sister's home.
At some point, I lost my bearings. Probably in the haze of stress and confusion in the weeks before I left. At some point, I stopped thinking. Period. There is an entire list of the things I stopped thinking of - how it feels to honestly smile, Hashem creating me, the imagination of the little girl inside me, my friends' love for me, the Rebbe encouraging me, and what really great music sounds like.
I got to America, I looked around, and I felt awful. I walked down Kingston, and felt worse. I sat alone on a couch in Ithaca, and I wanted to die.
I could repeat all the nasty comments I made to myself about myself, but why waste the energy? So what that I (still) don't know what I'm doing in the summer! So what that I have, as my father phrases it, 'a belly'! So what that I'm still balancing my contradicting souls! To everything; so what!
Today I felt something within me relax. Pressure had coiled up within me, soiling my every thought with its touch, and suddenly it released. It just let go. I closed my eyes and smiled, having reawakened, right there, in the middle of the kitchen.
It doesn't mean I dont have work to do. There is still a long path for me to travel. And it will contain curves like this one again, the same way it has before. But every time I emerge from one of these curves whole, I am grateful all over again. Every time I regain my focus, I marvel at the clarity anew.