It's almost 2am and I'm laying in bed with nine million thoughts racing through my head. This is a common thing in my life but it is especially common recently. The second that I think about how my apartment will be empty in a month and that I'm going to have to leave here and move on to who the hell knows what, a gigantic lump appears in my throat and my brain gets all hot.
While I have to admit school-wise this quarter has been a mixture of boring and uninspiring, i'm totally thankful that my last months here have been this way. The past ten weeks have been hard emotionally because where I am right now is not where I thought I would be if you asked me months ago. I had this whole other idea of where I was going once I was done with SCAD and when that idea revealed itself as being not a great one, this whole other part of life emerged. I went from being in a relationship, feeling like I had everything perfectly mapped out and ready for me and frankly, feeling old, to feeling like I had no idea what was next, and feeling completely my age. And it's been fun. And totally scary and weird.
I keep going back to the songs I listened to when I first moved to Savannah, and what I wrote about it (here, here, here and especially here.) and what I was doing and what has been happening over the past three years. I suppose it's normal to do that when a chapter is coming to a close. I'm just at a place where I feel comfortable being here again. I'm present. I've been building better relationships with the people i've known here and even meeting new friends. Why now? Why when I have to pack it all up and hit the road and head off into that big weirdo post-college sunset? It's the first time in my Real Person (well, almost real person) life where I don't truly know what is next.
What is for certain is that I have to kiss this all goodbye and I don't feel ready. I don't want to say goodbye to my apartment that I put my heart & soul into. Or the street that I live on that I used to wander around when I first moved here, dreaming about what it would be like to wake up there everyday. I don't want to not be able to walk around the cobblestone streets, listening to music, getting my favorite coffee and still feeling obsessed with the beautiful architecture and mossy trees. I don't want to say goodbye to my friends and familiar faces or nights out at the same places that I was once sick of but now have fallen in love with again. I don't want to say goodbye to my favorite secret low-country driving routes I go on to clear my head, with a fountain soda in the cupholder, mix CDs blasting with the windows down. I just don't want to get on that plane at the end of March knowing that I don't have a home here anymore.
Is anyone ever ready to suck it up and move on? Change is hard. The unknown is hard. I just have to feel confident that whatever is to come will be just as good, or better. And it can be a new cool chapter that I'll cry about closing one day years from now, just like I'm doing now.
