Millay wrote that numb, dejected line back in the first half of the twentieth century, somewhere between Maine and Vermont. In her fifty-eight years, she had more than her fair share of failed relationships, romantic trysts, sexual misadventures and personal tragedy. But she is my hero. She poured her heart unabashedly onto page after tear-stained page, daring the world to judge her for so readily jumping head-first into the grittiest, rawest, most passion-filled life she could find. She was plagued throughout life by alcoholism and heartbreak and devastating loss, experiences which no doubt gutted her emotionally but also helped produce what is without question some of the best poetry of the last century. She was a wild, Pulitzer Prize-winning professional success and a bitter personal failure. So why do I admire her so much? Because she knew what she wanted, and she spent every moment of her almost-six decades chasing it.
Six days shy of my permanent departure from Ukraine, my heart is most definitely not what it was before. The past eight months have passed in a blink, or a pounding heartbeat, as swift as a morning commuter's glance on the metro, and they have left me utterly changed. Part of me feels purged. Part of me feels newly burdened with sadness at leaving the people who may well be the first real, true friends I've had and managed to keep. The other parts of me just feel ... grateful. And happy. It's hard to leave what's familiar, but even harder to leave a place where I've been happy in a way I'd never known before. Happy in a free, easy way that came as naturally as breathing, without much, if any, effort from me. Ukraine hasn't asked any more of me than I was willing or able to give, which is why it has been so easy to give, and give, and give some more, until my heart is at once bursting and empty and thirsting for more.
I'm twenty-five years old, and it has taken me nearly all of that time to realize and admit to myself what I want, which is to pour my own brand of barely-restrained passion onto the pages of whatever publication I can find. Next week will be Turkey. July will be Taiwan. August, if I'm lucky, will be Peru. But wherever I am, I'll take with me the lightness and freedom I found in Ukraine. The friendships will remain, the memories will take deeper root and every day I'll be closer to becoming the person I was born to be.
No, my heart is changed. It's bigger now, and stronger. It beats cheerfully and without fear. It knows what it wants.
Millay would be proud.
