All we are, we are. And every day is a start of something beautiful

My alarm is set for 5:00 a.m. Tomorrow I leave for Philadelphia. From there, I fly to Africa.

There seems to be no other way to look at things: I am perched this evening on a precipice.

I've never been anywhere near this nervous. Since Saturday morning I have felt the constant, steady pounding of my heart in my lower throat, deep below the dip between my collarbones. It isn't an entirely unfamiliar sensation, although I admit in the past it has accompanied much more immediately satisfying occasions, but it's not a feeling I imagined could last so long. It is serving as a physical and inescapable reminder of what is to come. And soon.

Life, I read today, begins outside your comfort zone.

It seems tonight I will be sleeping on the border of that area.

I love you, and I simply cannot wait to meet you all again.