First.

For the first time I'm starting to feel the meaning of the word s.u.r.v.i.v.e.
I have done it. Surviv-ed my hardest semester of college. Surviv-ing this break up. Felt my highest high and my lowest low. Two new extreme feelings for the first time ever. Two new parts of me.
Survive. Endure. I'm not sure exactly, I just know I've made it to the end of this...segment. this...chapter. The hardest one yet.
What happens to these experiences, they don't just get erased. This is how we become who we are.
What does it mean to "get through" something? And what happens after?

I've just spent a lot of time suffering. Feeling sad about a relationship ending, refusing to let go of it, feeling stressed about schoolwork, feeling anxious and scared about the preparation I'm doing for post graduation. And then I didn't want to suffer anymore. I have these new feelings coming out of this experience and I haven't known how to cope with them. Okay, so I'm done being unhappy, but now what? Who am I now after all that. When we emerge again after being lost in some experience, when we have survived, how do we find ourselves again? How do we adjust to the subtle changes? On Friday someone told me "it's like a new part of you, and now you're just adjusting to that" - THAT made sense.

We're like trees. And then all of a sudden there's a new new branch popping out of your side and when you look to it you think what! what's that? where did that come from and that's part of me now? okay... And you adjust, keep going, just with a new part of you; a new branch.

Is that what growing up is? Is that what e.x.p.e.r.i.e.n.c.e. is? Is that what e.x.p.e.r.i.e.n.c.e. feels like?
Is this the process of how we've become who we are and how we will become who we will be..
These are the things that become a part of us.