Moving On

I don't know if I'm ready to move on.  Much as I've spent most of the past year bitching and moaning about how miserable I was and how I was so ready to be done with this and with that and with those other things, now that it's actually over...it's odd.  Somehow I don't feel ready anymore but just a little bit afraid.  Because even if everything did prepare us so well, it's still not the same.  No matter how stupid or annoying it was, that place was still home for several years.  It made me who I am.

I don't know that I really want to leave that behind.  Then again, I don't exactly have a choice in the matter at this point.  It's just scary to have to try to put things back together after everything you once knew is really legitimately over.  It's probably not going to be worse, and there's a good chance it's not going to be better.  That's just how life works.  And I know I can't just dwell in the past, but it's hard to realize that most of the people I've gotten used to seeing every day, I'm probably never going to see again.

I was looking for a quote from Paper Towns by John Green about not being able to follow the people you love, but then I came across another one instead:

"It's so hard to leave--until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world...Leaving feels too good, once you leave."

That's where I am right now.  Because even though I've been gone for months, I haven't really left yet.  Everything I know about life is about being there, in that place, surrounded by those people and yes, even putting up with the nonsense.  That's why it's so hard for me to imagine that in one month exactly, I'm going to be somewhere else.  In another place, surrounded by another group of people, living another life.

I haven't yet pulled myself out of that life, that place, that environment.  I know that moving will do it.  I know in part because I won't have a choice and in part because I'll be so caught up in everything around me that I won't be able to hold on to it any longer.  And I imagine that then I'll wonder why it ever seemed so hard to let it go.  But for now, I'm still here.  I'm floating between two worlds, not ready to let go of one because I don't yet know how to grasp the other.