Uprooting

Packed about 2/3 of my things now. Clothes, office stuff, my red chair, prepped myself an emergency stay bag. Tomorrow (or later tonight, if I get a second wind) I'll clean up the kitchen and pack those things too. I have a surprisingly small pile of discards on the floor. Somehow I thought I'd have more things I wanted to get rid of, but I guess I've been shedding those items with every move, and evidently there's not much I accumulated in the past 8 months.

I haven't really been going outside this week. Part of it is because I've been severely sleep deprived (from stress, anxiety, drinking coffee/alcohol, and not working out all my energy earlier that day) and I've been attempting to catch up on sleep. Part of it is because when I go outside I have these conflicting feelings. It partially surprises me that I will miss pieces of this place. For so long instead of having fond memories I've had a lot of awful ones, or rather memories of very small, insignificant incidents that my depression or self-consciousness blew into enormous monstrosities of imagination that still make me uncomfortable when I think about them. Silly things, like saying or doing something wrong, that made me feel sorely alien despite no one else noticing a thing.

It's been strange to realize that that was happening, and afterwards to always try to keep in mind that those fears are only in my head. It took me about two years to get over my mental fear of running in the park after I had my surgery. I am still slightly terrified of one of my committee members because of the first time I interviewed with him before he even joined my committee. I still cringe when I see people pouring a beer and remember that one night I went with M to the pub and, drunk, inexperienced and unthinking, poured her almost 80% glass full of foam and got heckled by a couple of old guys sitting at the next table. Haha. Thinking about these fears right now, with my wits about me, I laugh, but sometimes when I'm not well I will fixate on those small things and feel like I'm not good enough to... I don't know. Be a person. Be here.

I'll admit, I have been depressed these past couple of weeks. I was very much at peace with myself and taking good care of my health during June and July, but at the beginning of August I started losing focus and wasn't able to pull myself together. Other anxieties too, probably, which I didn't identify and process. This is a part of why I need to go home. I've become so entangled in work that I get physically and mentally ill if things aren't going to plan, and that's just not a reasonable way to live.

I want to miss my life here. Last week I went out with L and C. That was about when it sunk in that, mentally, I've essentially already left. I've been living in limbo for a couple of years now, and only the conversations I had with my friend M kept me caring about the world here that I used to know. That night, about half the conversation had nothing in common with me or anything that I recognized or could contribute to. The rest was just pleasantries. It was like we had become strangers again. It was a bit parenthetical, an oddly beautiful sort of symmetry. Throughout the evening I kept thinking about those memorable evenings when we used to go out, M and L and I, and the kinds of conversations we had, all the dreams we had, all the hopes and optimisms and the inner thoughts we shared. At this last evening it just wasn't the same because M wasn't there, with that way she always did, asking the questions I'd never have the courage to ask.

I miss those years, and the times we shared. But of this place I can only miss patchwork pieces, the fleeting constants, like the baby minks playing by the rocks bordering the lake, the expansive rush of clouds across the sky, the cry of red-winged blackbirds, the slow, methodical stalk of the heron who lives in the park.

It is, we are, all changing too fast.

by tomorrow we'll be swimming with the fishes
leave our troubles in the sand
and when the sun comes up
we'll be nothing but dust,
just the outlines of our hands