I have left a few times.
I will not say I am an expert at leaving, but I have become practiced at it. Life in general forces us to make a lot of choices, and leaving, like all other activities, is full of them. What to keep, what to let go of. When to start talking about it. When to start imagining it. When to finally do it.
Leaving and going are two different things. You go in an instant: you board a plane, walk out a door, hop on a bus. Leaving is a process. When I was 14 I left a place that had been my home for a very long time. My father went before the rest of us; six weeks before, and his departure initiated the leaving. By the end of it, I just wanted to be gone.
This time is the second time I leave a place alone that I have called home. I have spent the last several weeks building up to it. Throwing things away, packing odds and ends, scheduling last hurrahs, picking a date for my goodbye party.
It is difficult. I have lived here for four and a half years, and I have become very entangled. I am caught in a web of people and places, and as I leave I must extract myself slowly and painstakingly. Not entirely, but enough to gain a new mobility, to be able to adventure to a new place. This is where much of the complexity comes in. I cannot simply wait for a clean break that would tear many of us apart. Instead I have decided to evaluate, to pull, to prod, to examine my relationships and life patterns and find new ways for them to settle into the next season of life.
I cry. On busses, in hallways, on the bedroom floor. I grieve for things that will no longer be a part of my life. This is the painful, the letting go, but it is meaningful, tracing reminders across my heart of the joy and love I have experienced here. I do not like change, but I need it.
I know the next adventure will be good. It is worth the transition, the transplanting. There is merit, but as my counselor put it, I stand in the tension between a tender heart and an adventurous soul. As I ponder these things, I wonder about who I have been and who I will become. The amount this time and place have changed me, and how many more changes await on the shores ahead.
Then I settle down for one more “last” with one more treasured soul I will soon be far from, and I hear comforting words from an unexpected place:
“Times change and so must I. We all change when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s ok, that’s good, as long as you keep moving, as long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this, not one day I swear.”
So this change will be difficult. It will be another element that shapes me into a new person, growing, transforming. Though it may be painful and sad, I must feel it and see it. I have determined I will not forget one moment of it.