Love and life

August.

September 1, 2024 Love and life

A lot going on at the moment

Air miles:19,779

Train miles: 836

Auto miles:~1478

Boat miles: about 60

Foot miles: Approximately 38 as measured by Apple Watch

Since August 1, I saw the most popular concert in my lifetime. {It was amazing.} I made and traded friendship bracelets with strangers/ new friends. {So much fun and really cool to see international Swifties come up with some neat ideas–My favorite Je suis Calme.} It was a whirlwind of transportation {planes USA –> Canada –> Switzerland –> Germany –> Poland–> Germany–> USA] and everything aligned just perfectly to get me to Poland and back in time to take a final exam–wait what?!?. Yeah, right in the middle of all this chaos I had a final exam on Aug 5.

After seeing Taylor in Warsaw on August 3, I high-tailed it back to South Carolina in order to sit for my Psychopharmacology Final. (That I won a silver medal in. In honor of the Olympics, I’ve decided to rename grades Gold, Silver, and Bronze because anything less than 82.9 on any exam., final, or class is my one way ticket out of the program. 9 more months…9 months to go until graduation)

Sparkly. Swiftie. Ready to party
Holy crap. It’s Taylor!!!
you’re right, I do

After that emotional weekend, I hit a Trauma-Informed Care conference (required training), and then a different whirlwind in a different direction. Off to Alaska. To see the bears I’ve loved since 2014. Sadly no Otis, but still BEARS! Big giant brown bears. So close I could almost touch one. (I didn’t; I know better, even though I don’t act like it most of the time).

oh you are a sexy beast
Gully–I love how happy you are about catching a fish
It’s the BEADY BUNCH–a bunch of girl bears is a force of nature
Colbert–I love being your BBF (best bear friend) said her #164 Bucky Dent
I get this way too after too much food or too long of a hike

It’s all still so overwhelming–seeing two things in three weeks that I often wondered if I’d ever see. Personally, I feel like I’ve turned a corner. Breaking up with a long term partner is never easy. Even if it is the right thing to do. Even if the reasons make sense. When you have loved a person, faults and all, and then that person is no longer in your life, it’s human nature to feel like a failure. I’ve experience a lot of loss and misdirection in the last two years, but I finally feel like I’m back on track. Thanks to the bears at Katmai and songs from the one and only Taylor Swift.

Stay. Don’t go.

May 27, 2018 Love and life Peace Corps

Stay. Don’t go. That’s all I wanted to hear. We met for dinner one last time before I planned to leave. We met at our favorite pizza place. A place we’d been probably a hundred times before. A place I haven’t been since. All I wanted was to hear you say “Stay with me.”

Those words never came.

I heard the litany of excuses. “We’ll be together when you come back.” “I don’t want to hold you back.” “You were meant for this.” “If I tell you not to go, you’ll resent me later on” [OK that one might be true]. While I heard it all, I still wanted you to just say ‘Stay’.

In some ways, this was the sequel. The final installment in the story of us. We’ve done this dance and played this film so many times before, I should have been prepared for the ending.

I wasn’t.

Tears fell as I pulled away. Amazingly, I held it together as you kissed me and told me to go be amazing. I stared into your green-gray eyes, imploring you to say something. But you didn’t. And I can still see you standing there as I drive away.

I waited for the call that never came. I finished packing my bags with tears running down my face. My last night at home surrounded by friends was amazing. I noticed you weren’t there. Tears happened on the way to the airport. And again at check in. But once I got on the plane, everything was OK. Traveling was familiar-  like an old friend welcoming me back. It envelopes me like a favorite, much too big sweatshirt. Everything feels new and exciting, and that feeling is a comfort to me.

I called you after our first day of training. It was boring as most trainings are, but when you told me you heard an excitement in my voice that’s being missing, you knew you made the right decision. “I was so close to saying ‘Why can’t you stay?’ I’m glad I didn’t because this is what you were meant to do”

I melted. Probably died a little too. I would have stayed. And maybe you knew that too. And in a random act of selflessness, you told me to go change the world. Or at least a corner of it.

After so long together, I thought I knew you like the back of my hand. Turns out, I hardly knew you at all.