"Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come."

From the movie, "Under The Tuscan Sun,"
Book by Frances Mayes

Under The Tuscan Sun is a movie so dear to me that I own a copy and on days when I have been swallowed up nearly whole by depression, I have watched it over and over all day. The only other movie I watch like that is Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. But it is Under The Tuscan Sun that has given me so much hope, lifted me up and made me realize that dreams aren't just imaginary things that drift off into the wind, but vehicles, like the train tracks on the Semmering, that are built with the knowledge, with the belief, that someday, the train will come. And I see, off in the distance, my train finally making it's ways up the tracks. I see it's little form moving closer to me, slowly, very slowly, but finally, there is a train that can travel these tracks. I will make it.

There are so many things I have dreamt of. Things I couldn't imagine possible in the life that I have known, and all of a sudden all things seem possible, not all at once, some dreams may take years, but if I've learned anything at all in my life, and we've all heard this at some time or another, "It's not the end that matters, but the journey that matters in the end." I have already taken steps. For the last few years I think that, unknowingly, I have been building those tracks. I had dreams, and I had to believe that they would one day manifest, but my spirits would flag and there were many obstacles in my way. But then I thought of the men who built those tracks.

Can you imagine what might have been in the minds of the men who braved steep, snow-covered, icy slopes to built train tracks through a part of the mountains that was thought impossible by many, a pipe dream by most, and no train, yet, in existence, to even cross those tracks. I have been swimming upstream in my own life for so long, never quitting, ever moving forward, when I couldn't even imagine what they outcome might be, that I was not unlike those men building those tracks. Because of the circumstances of the last years I have seen many dreams fall through, but I continued moving forward with a belief in myself that few could understand. Some thought me crazy, some pitied me, but on I went and on I'll go. I don't know how long it will take for the train to come round the bend and into the station, but I'll be ready, and when I hop on that train no one will be able to stop me!

I think of this quote so often I have used it before in my writings, and will again. It's one of the reasons I watch that movie so often because you see a woman go through terrible trauma, leading to what looks like a ridiculously impossible dream, only to end up finding everything she was looking for.

I've always loved trains. Now I'm preparing to ride one into my new life and my steamer trunk is being packed slowly, in my mind, so that I take only the things that I need, and can begin again. The train is coming round the bend. I've known, somewhere inside of me, all along, that someday the train would come...