The edge of a hunger headache pangs painfully up against the back of my skull, and I rub my fingertips tenderly over its epicenter, hoping to relieve some of the pressure building up behind my eyes. After all, we have about six more hours of travel to go before we arrive in Dublin, and at least another hour after that before we get breakfast in our bellies. Unfortunately, this means the headache will continue, so I distractedly shift in my seat to watch the streaks of tangerine sink and melt into the horizon. It will only be a few minutes before the sky darkens completely and the lights quietly flicker out inside the belly of the plane. My forehead cools quickly from the quiet chill of the window where I lean, resting my chin on my hand, eyes closed, lost in thought.

So much of me is squeezed into these three suitcases, this backpack, my pockets, the creases between my eyebrows. I brought everything – all of me – onto this plane. Into this overwhelming singular, infinite moment. I’m already nursing an emotional hangover and I haven’t even arrived yet. I sit quietly in my seat and remember every choice that brought me to it. I can’t stand to read or listen to music. Even so, I try. I fail. My attention is split into a thousand different memories. I can’t harness enough focus to bring my mind back into this body. Dad sleeps restlessly beside me, but I barely register his stirring. I hand him my eye mask mindlessly and watch him pull it over his head, eyes closed. I turn back to the sky.

I won’t be sleeping tonight.

I begin to trace the red string of this moment back in time, as far as it will take me in conscious memory. And all I can do is remember when things fell apart. So many times, in so many ways, life has unravelled itself around me, leaving me devastated and wondering what the greater purpose could possibly be. What kind of God would break my heart this way? What kind of master plan includes all of this pain?

Hope was always flitting in and out of my grasp. Faith, the same. And yet, as I sit remembering, thousands of feet above the icy Atlantic currents, every hard moment unfolds, and splits open into a fragile new bloom. All the friendships scattered behind me. The deaths of people I love. The unknowing of where to turn next. The pain of making the right choice, not the easy choice. The self-doubt. The anxiety. The moments with my head in a toilet, willing myself to get up off the floor and do the next impossibly hard thing. Indecision. Mistakes. Failure.

And yet, every significant loss in my life has brought me something beautiful. Many times (most times), I am blind to the beautiful thing until it too, is behind me. And then my eyes widen and I realize that incredible moment, place, person, opportunity was born out of what I lost. It was only ever made available to me after the space in my heart had broken wide open in order to receive it. Sitting in 14C, unstretched muscles aching, I watch in surprise as all of the trails slide over themselves, becoming one path. I realize truly, for the first time, where I am going. Why I am going. Who I will become. The tears stop sliding down my cheeks. The roaring river of grief in my chest quiets into a trickling stream. The people and places I leave behind in my sweet Seattle, on the roads I know like my own body, will never leave me. I have not left them.

They are here, on this plane. They are me.  

I was brought into this seat because I left and was left. I chose and was chosen. I lost and was lost. Through some combination of my own choices and the fateful, often painful, hand of the universe, I became exactly the person who walked onto this plane. Who backed herself enough to apply to Cambridge. Who believed in herself enough to accept the challenge, the honor, the mystery of it all.

I do not think I deserve any of it. I am not entitled, by wit or intellect or finance, to this education. In fact, I am the first on the Irish side of my immediate family to get a postgraduate degree. I will surely not be the last. I realize now though, that when I think about ‘deservedness’, I understand that on the whole, none of us are deserving of what we are given. We are owed nothing in this wicked and wonderful life. There are far more deserving for this moment than I. In my family, in the tangled roots of our history, in the world, I am but a buoy, marking this moment in place, in our ocean of choices.

Our talents and strengths, our most precious and beloved qualities, come bubbling up to us from an unknown hot spring of truth. Yes, I worked hard for this opportunity. But I only truly stumbled upon this moment through the oscillating waves of hardship and error, then resilience and forgiveness. Through the things I had no say in. The things I did not ask for. Through doors I did not open but were opened for me by some undercurrent, some force that believed in me. By leaning on my gifts and the people close to me. Feeling everything through the translucent gray lens of sorrow. Watching the dominoes fall, over and over and over, until finally, they stop, and the world grows quiet. Then somehow, I rebuild, one by one.

All of this to say is I feel as though I am one magnificent ache. All of me hurts. I am wary of the future, and skeptical of the struggle that I know lurks in the shadows. But I am also so, so excited. The prospect of an education like this thrills me. I am smart. I was born for this. I was made to forge a fantastically special and magical life.  The last year and a half stripped me bare and wore me down – somewhere along the way, I set down my grit and forgot where I placed it. But I am remembering. I remember.

And I know that whatever I learn, whoever I find, wherever I find them – I will know I am stomping fiercely down the path of great and wide adventure. What could possibly be more beautiful than that?

I was made for this.