In two weeks I will be a college student and a six hour drive from my current home. In two weeks I will leave my mom, the one person who has never forsaken me. I feel as though this movement will displace me somehow; I shan't exist any longer. In two weeks all of this will be gone.
This waiting game is one I have known all too well, yet its compass now dips into uncharted territory. This waiting game has never ended before. Now the countdown once set at a trickle pace hurtles toward an end I cannot imagine fully.
New belongings have slowly overtaken a corner of my room as the summer has progressed. I haven't yet had the heart to disassemble that which I already own and use regularly. Instead I create list upon list of to-dos with the frustrated knowledge that for all my planning there will be something I forget or cannot obtain until I am immersed in a new location.
I sit quietly, suspended and numb in the knowledge that I will soon be gone.
I haven't cried enough. I haven't written enough. I haven't... enough.
I will never be ready. Maybe this is what burns the most.
grapefruitgrapefruitgrapefruitgrapefruit
ReplyDelete#intellectualcomments
#quality
I love you Katherine. And you're totally right. You're never going to be ready. BUT THAT'S OKAY, because things have a way of working out anyway. :) You are well-loved, and this move is not going to change that.
Oh fer heaven's sake, you're not going to jump off a bride somewhere, you're just off to college! Nothing's ending, it's just a new chapter beginning. You writer/librarians should be all about chapters, huh?
ReplyDeleteBut I understand. I guess time and experience has jaded me, I've moved so much and been off to this and that in my life over so many years, approximately two and a half times your lifespan so far.
I had to actually reflect back on that day I left for Navy bootcamp - that was my college, sadly - and it was the first time I left mom. Dad was gone, having been taken from us a couple of years before. It was just mom and I - not even a little sister in my case! And I remember now my apprehension and wide-eyed wonder. I was 18 too.
You'll be fine. Your mom loves you, as do Dorian and I, and your good friends. Oh yeah, your sis too! There'll be some tears that day you head-out but make sure they know they're happy tears, because it will be the first day of that new and exciting chapter.
Oh, and to add something.. I know I'm going to sound all fuddy-duddy *harrumph* but in "MY DAY," (I KNOW, huh?) we didn't have the INTERNET! When I went off to that Navy bootcamp I didn't see mom or hear a darned thing for 3 months. I had to rest quietly in the knowledge that surely if some dire situation happened back at home they'd pull me out of the barracks or the marching formation and TELL ME, right? I'd get a telegram or SOMETHING.. (those were short messages sent by wire and printed on paper that were hand-delivered and only sent if they were VERY important).
ReplyDeleteShe came to my Navy bootcamp graduation but after that when I landed in San Diego for further training I had once or twice a week on the phone with her. AND I had to go to a payphone (as antiquated now as telegrams, eh?)
Point being, that you can get right online with Teri that first night in the dorm. "Hi mom, everything's fine, I'm loving it and my roommate is awesome!" - "That's nice sweetheart, okay talk to you tomorrow!"
You kids these days, I swear, haha! You do have it better. You're going to be fine. Oh, and we better be on that list of who you update within the first few days! We'll be right here and you know our number.
I need to be specific and correct myself here (it's been a long time since Navy bootcamp!) ~ we were allowed to write home actual letters (yes, snail-mail!) on our first day to let family know we'd arrived and were "in good hands." Then we couldn't write anything the first month. After that we were allowed to write something like one or two letters a week and in the third month we could call home on a payphone but it was all heavily regulated. You get the point.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'll stop commenting now. Until tomorrow..
HUG TIME FOREVER.
ReplyDeleteIt's awful. No lies. It's absolutely WONDERFUL and BRILLIANT. Bright and shiny and full of glitter, but it's also the most terrible and horrifying thing ever. They kind of balance each other out, in the end.
My first night at college was the weekend before school started. There was a huge weekend carnival thing, and lots of orientation activities which were all very nice. (They would have been nicer had I been more social.) I ditched the carnival and my roommate the first night, went back to my room and sobbed for, like, fifteen minutes.
And then things started looking up. Let yourself feel all the feelings, and the wonderful will outweigh the terrible. :)