There are so many incandescent moments; times when the place and people are just right, righter than I use to think they could be, and all there is to do is live in it, look around and feel ridiculously lucky to have been born into a world so chalk full of moments like this. The beauty rips me open and I let it; I let it swallow me whole, surrender to whatever it all means, if it means anything at all. It’s bliss. It’s all we need. It’s love and I believe in it more than anything, believe that moments like this prove how good and pure and simple life can occasionally be. We have these moments and they are everything.

I cling to them. Lying on top of the rocks in Central Park, screaming the chorus five feet away from the band I love most, walking the dogs past my old elementary school.

I cried at the top of the mountain in California, on the bus out of San Francisco, sitting alone on the beach before leaving North Carolina. It’s hard to leave these places that make me so whole, that accept me much more than the walls of my high school ever could.