A Bitter Sweet Adieu

I sit here having hugged the last of my friends good bye and looking out onto the pouring rain and I realize how much I will miss this place when it is gone. I have moved all of my earthly possessions out of this tiny hole in the wall I have called a home, placed them in boxes, swept them under the futon, thrown them into the garbage room and must now return to a place that I love, but that has become more alien to me than I thought possible. This is the last wall between the “real world” and myself and it is times like these when the aging process and the reality of it grows heavy on my shoulders. I will age, my friends will come and go, places will come and go, and nothing will stay the same for any longer than it takes for me to grasp the edge of it. I sit in an emptied dorm room and look out onto the same damn pine tree that has been my unchangeable company for the past 9 months. I think about the memories of this past year and realize that my thinking on them in this room, with this storm outside, is a memory in of itself. That there is no true end just continuous living until we die, and who knows? Maybe after death is when the true living begins. I will miss my friends. But it is this time; the time knowing that I miss them even though we will all return, that gives a daunting foreshadow to a time in the not so distant future when we will leave without a round trip ticket, the time when I will say goodbye to those around me with no assurance that they will boomarang back into my embrace. How life changes every day. It makes me sad and yet it makes me happy to have been able to spend this time with the people I have grown to love over this past year. I thank you all for your amazingness, I will see you soon and will love you dearly till then.

~The Singing Ginger