for the first time in my adult life, i will live alone. save mega and mouse, i'll be responsible for only my meals, my mess, my whereabouts. my time will be entirely my own. what that will feel like or look like, i can only imagine. (and believe me, i do.)
when i do imagine it, when i allow my mind to place me in this uncharted territory, the emotion that overwhelms me is impossible to capture in a word. but it is remarkably similar to what i've experienced at the edge of a precipice.
adrenaline, tinged with fear. accomplishment, flush with pride. awe, welling with gratitude.
and, pause. a precipice is nothing else if not a pregnant moment of pause.
as i peer out across the landscape yet to explore, and look back at what i've traversed, my knees are shaky and my heart rises in my chest. for fear of the edge's danger, i sit down... and in the simple, protective pause, a new emotion surfaces: peace.
though the uncertainty and mystery remain, though i have only my imagined view of what lies ahead, one clear truth persists. one of the many truisms my mom conveyed in my young adulthood comes to mind: wherever you go, there you are. and though at the time, she meant it as a reminder that i couldn't run away from myself, twenty years later it connotes a different meaning.
no matter who else is there, or isn't, i will be. iyanla vanzant described it as being with yourself, rather than by yourself in her 1998 bestseller "In the Meantime." when i read that then, in my mid-twenties, it seemed forced and eye-roll-worthy, but now the concept resonates with me.
and i find the promise of that to be reassuring and the pregnant pause of the next few months to be a time of deliberate creation. a portal to my passions, those yet undiscovered and those merely under-pursued.
d: crystallized memories of these precious last days with luke
b: passionate is one of my best qualities
g: self-entertaining is a close second
