Tornado.

I sat there staring out the window, watching pieces of garbage mixed with leaves swirl around and around in a circle, fascinated by the invisible wind tunnel in the middle that kept it circling around. And around and around and around. Like a little mini tornado of wind and leaves.

I was leaving Manhattan, the city that I hope to one day call mine, and I felt defeated. When I'm in New York, my mind is aflutter with all new colors. It's alive with new stories and words that I never new existed before, and to leave such a place feels like dying to a part of myself; the part of me that feels so suppressed in my everyday, khaki colored world of Washington D.C.

I looked at the boy sitting next to me, and although he didn't know it, we were in a fight. I was mad for no reason, annoyed at circumstances, and he was the obvious place to dump my pain. I do this to him more than I don't, and he's the most loving character in my life's story, because he loves me when I'm wrong, and he loves me when he's right. I need him, because he reminds me that love isn't circumstantial, even when you're mad.

I kept seeing those leaves in my mind, swirling around and around, the entire ride back. I felt like I knew those leaves, always going around and around and never knowing how to get out of that wind tunnel. My wind tunnel is a tornado of anger, disappointment, joy, forgiveness, grace and love. I can't ever escape any of those, and I'm learning that you aren't supposed to. Grace doesn't mean a life without disappointment, it just means you have a reason to persevere. My sweet Jesus, that boy, my family and my friends are the love, forgiveness and grace of my wind tunnel. And that same wind tunnel that teaches me disappointment, is what teaches me how to dream big, how to think in new colors and new stories, even when the last disappointment tells me no.