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| (Photograph by Haley Hetrick) |
In approximately 5 hours I will be on my way to the airport, to catch a plane, headed for New York City.
Next time I return to the home I have spent the past ten years of my life in, it will be December, and much will have changed. I expected to sit in my room feeling depressed by the emptiness of the walls and the suitcases that sit in a row by the door, but I don't. I thought my room would suddenly transform into an empty space, void of myself. But as long as I stay here, perched on the edge of my bed, it is still mine. The amount of photographs on the wall or the books on the shelves, no longer epitomizes my life. I do. That's what I've been finding most frightening. This feeling that as long as I remain where I am, all that I have held dear will still be mine, but that the moment I leave, I will lose those places, those memories, those relationships. They won't belong so intimately to me anymore, and like my room, they will become empty space.
Despite the weird, calm fragility of my emotions this past week, I am happy. I am, I am, I am.
Maybe once I get to my new city, poetry and prose will start leaking back into my fingertips, creaking into the cracks between my toes, nestling within the tangerine tinted sunbeams of my soul. Until then: "This is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."
