Detours.

I love Monday nights driving back from swing dancing, and any nights that I get to drive through the city, weaving downtown on the interstate in between the skyscrapers and glowing lights.

It is magical. The city is a heart that beats, and I am part of the pulse that gives it life and light each day. My dreams, my life, my future and my past are entwined with this city. It's especially magical on nights like tonight, when the clouds hover low in the sky, covering the tall buildings in a foggy blanket. Clouds billow past the building tops. They lend the entire city an air of mysticality;  they turn it into an exquisite, beautiful, alluring thing from which I cannot take my eyes away.

And there am I - this one lone driver in a city of millions. I am living my new little life, going to school and running my small business and doing the little things that make me, me and making new relationships and reading books and... this is me. Yet I feel utterly, completely changed from life just a few short months ago. As I drove to work Friday, I was pondering life and thinking about the strange twists and turns that life has taken in just the course of a few weeks.

Of course, my life was completely turned upside down. Leaving the comfort of small-town Macon, I left the friends and people I loved, left the place I had come to know, with its comfortable nooks and crannies, for a place where I was for the first time in my life, utterly and truly alone.
And it was strange. Scary. Exhilarating.

I stepped out of my comfort zone, from a pond to an ocean.

And tonight, I feel like a lot of things and I feel a lot of things about my life. Lately one of the things that I have been thinking of a lot is that I feel as though I have been living in the dark for all of my life... without even realizing it. Physical Therapy school has changed my life in merely the course of the 7 weeks I have been here, and I cannot fathom how much more it will change me in the coming years. I am here not to train for a job, as the panelists at the Physical Therapy Association of Georgia meeting talked about on Saturday. I am here to mold myself, to create and shape myself for a profession. And a profession is not a mere job. It is an investment. It is getting involved in legislature, or making contacts with my fellow colleagues, or mentors or professionals in the field. It is molding myself into the shape of my highest ideals, and constantly refining what my ideals are, seeking better at every turn and angle. It is growing and bettering my mind, body and soul, for the betterment of myself and for others. It is for learning and pursuing knowledge for my field not just out of duty, but for passion and a longing for excellence. It is forming relationships, helping others and making impacts, all of which matter - no matter how big or how small. And once I learned to embrace this... I felt as though I knew that no matter the challenges I face here, that I have what it takes to excel. My name is Lacy Elizabeth Ball, and I can do this. I am going to be the best Physical Therapist that I can possibly make myself, no matter what it takes.

I am pushing myself to be brand new and all the same. I am going dancing for the first time in my life. I am changing the little things - from the way I walk in public to my posture to my observations of people in the grocery store. I am growing more comfortable in my own skin but still have a long way to go. I am recognizing my strengths (resiliency, passion, drive, balance) but pushing to improve on my weaknesses - (patience, accountability, worrying, communication ... so many other things).

What have I been doing all these years? Why do I feel as though I have been living in the dark? Because my eyes have been open more than they ever have before. To know the knowledge that I have been given in only my short time in graduate school so far makes me acutely aware of how far I have to go. But it also makes me realize what power this knowledge is giving me, to know and to do. How it shapes my actions and shapes my role in life. How it gives me responsibility to use it to better the world in whatever way is right. I am humbled and empowered all at the same time.

I feel as though I had taken a long detour these last few years. Sometimes I don't know the point. Sometimes I feel as though I've been wandering, but I know that there was a purpose to it all. There has to be. I feel alive like I never have before - I am the same, but I am different. The experiences of these last years have shaped me and molded me, have hurt me and built me up. They have shown me a life of colour I never imagined, brilliant and bold and vibrant even on the days that I feel down and the world is grey.
It is beautiful, every moment of it.