Do you ever have moments, small, insignificant moments, during which you have a realization that this moment, this here and now, will be stuck in your mind forever? Here's a moment I always find myself looking back to whenever I feel scared or like my life is getting to be too much for me to handle:

I was laying on the floor in my mom and dad's room in the early summer. It was one of those lazy days that I had spent mostly playing in the cul-de-sac, and I was incredibly bored because I had already jumped on the trampoline and read and rode my bike and done everything there was possible to do on a summer day. The street I lived on had gotten to be too damn familiar. But back to the room: it had these light green walls, and there was an eighteenth century-style portrait of a woman on the wall that I always looked at, hoping that one day I look like her when I grew up, all soft, delicate hands and a small waist and flowing dresses. So I was laying there on the carpet that had been heated by the June sun. I was at the one spot in the room where it seemed like all the light was drawn to, where a rainbow was traced on the floor because of the way the light slanted into the room. I felt safe. I don't think I've felt that safe since that moment. Because there is nothing safer than being seven-years-old on the floor of your parents' room. Except for maybe being in their bed.

I feel like being back there on that floor right now.