Monday, July 2, 2012

Everything is ending (except not really)

It has only just occurred to me, as I sat on the edge of a motel bed in Anaheim and tried not to cry as I finished reading aloud the book we started a long time ago and have been reading on this trip, that my road trip is ending. I've been so wrapped up in excitement at returning home that I have left myself little time to contemplate that I am leaving this group adventure and carving out my own solo. On Thursday night, I will sleep in a bed that is (mostly) permanently mine. I'm going to wake up, for the first time in two months, someplace incredibly familiar and walk down streets I've known for the last ten years of my life.
This weird pang of sadness has taken me by surprise even though it shouldn't have. I hugged Rachel, tightly, before she climbed into bed and felt my throat tighten. I didn't want to let go but she was tired and I had blogs to write and sleep to evade. I'm leaving. Even writing it, the words sink in slowly and they hurt a little.
When I left home in May, I felt like I had something conceivable to come back to and it's a little fractured now but I'm clinging to my resolve. I feel a little torn but I made my choices and I'm sticking to them. I'm pretty certain that, either way, I'm going to feel a pull towards the other option but I feel ready to go home so home I will go.
Not to the Grand Canyon or Lake Powell in Utah. Not to Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore. My adventures this month will be on a different scale than the last two. Let us hope I don't regret taking myself out of the road trip and that my actions are driven by something more than hopeless longing.
I feel like Tara Finke from The Piper's Son in that way, not wanting my life to be spent in a perpetual state of longing--either for home or travel--and yet I'm starting to see longing as inevitable. I will miss my mom and sisters. I'll miss reading to them and making them laugh and pissing them off and drinking tea in a different coffee shop every day. But I've missed home, too, missed my dad and my cat and my friends and reliable wifi and... you. I've missed you. Is this what my life will be from now on, with my family moving nine hours away? Missing someone or everyone at all times, no matter where I am or who I'm with?
I guess I'll have to get used to it. Either that or take up drug abuse but I'm leaning towards the former.



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