That's Life
Packing is like getting dressed before a funeral. They’re both so painful, yet also mechanic. My suitcase is huge, it could fit both children in easily, and it’s still just under the twenty kilos required. Though this is only due to severe abuse of the hand luggage rules. I’m allowed eight kilos hand luggage, I’m not sure if that’s enough.Whenever you pack you have to say goodbye just a little bit. Whether you say it to a home, a place, or a lifestyle, it still has to be said. I hate saying goodbye. I’ve said it so often in my life that it kills me, it doesn’t get easier, it just goes on hurting.
This one hurts me. I don’t want to say goodbye. I want to go home, I’ve been away too long, I’m too far, and it’s too alien. But I’m saying goodbye to a version of a home. I’m saying goodbye to the only home that hasn’t been completely dysfunctional that I’ve lived in. I’m saying goodbye to a version of normalcy, a routine, a haven. And that’s hard.
I’m going to miss the cries of “Harr-ri-riitttttt” every morning from Robin. I’m going to miss putting Finn to sleep at night, his head resting on my arm as he looks with heavily lidded eyes at the bottle of milk I’m holding in his mouth. I’m going to miss chasing them around the house trying to retrieve the broom that they’ve decided is a great toy. I’m going to miss putting an end to their respective suicide attempts as they jump in the deep end of the swimming pool, dive down staircases, and hit themselves over the head with rocks.
I have a place here. I have a purpose, and I have unconditional acceptance if not love from two toddlers. I go home to a screaming household, crazy friends, and invoices for one thousand seven hundred pounds from the University. And that’s good too, that’s how it should be, and I’ve missed it. There’s an ex boyfriend for me to have tantrums about, a lot of old flings to be avoided like the plague, and a substantial amount of wine, spirits, and beer to be consumed in my own suicide attempt. I haven’t managed the arguments properly this summer with my father; for some reason it just isn’t the same over the phone. And tomorrow I have to go through my sister’s room, retrieving all the things she has “borrowed” from my room while I was away. I might leave that till Thursday, it will take far too long and I’m fully booked tomorrow.
So I have a place there too. As I’ll have a place at uni, and a place in New York when I make the first ever visit next year. That’s what I call progress, who thought I’d ever contemplate setting foot in the place? Never mind actually plan logically, and notify my mother (never a good thing to do, her hopes are so easily raised). God, three months with her… What am I thinking??? But never mind, cross that bridge when its there in front of me, refusing to budge out my way.
Over the years there will be many different niches for me to fill. There’ll be other people who’ll rely on me, and other times in which I’ll be forced to regret saying goodbye. But it won’t hurt less each time I do it; it’ll just be a different sort of hurt, each one unique to the situation.
So tomorrow, when I get on that plane, I’ll be saying goodbye. And it will hurt. But that’s life.
Labels: Flying, Introspection
