One week

Sitting on the back step of the Nunnery a few days ago (I moved back there, did I mention? I craved warmth & comfort before I left, and the other house was far-away & lonely) I experienced my first real fluttering surge of excitement to be leaving- to be heading off on some kind of adventure. I shared my excitement with the cat, twined around my feet, with the cigarette in my hand, with the stars.

Mostly when people ask me if I'm excited they get a sideways twisted smile, a shrug, a "yeah, I suppose- but-". But. But I am caught up in something gleaming and precious here, something that is a rare treat in my life, something that I lean into with the thrill of sunshine on cold leaves after a long, dark winter. To be leaving it, to know that it may not be here when I return, feels ridiculous. Feels like spitting in the eye of a moment of magic. Feels like saying, oh well, there will be others, and they will suffice, as though there is nothing ever really unique about a human connection. But to stay just for this, to turn my back on my plans and my self for a moment of magic, is even more ridiculous. It's the wrong energy to bring to something, the wrong material to build something out of. So I'm going, of course I'm going, and I don't know what will happen next.

"Probably", I tell people, "I'll be home by summer". But the point is, I don't know if I will be, and if I am, I don't know if she'll be here for me.

And even that easy-told story, of excitement dimmed in favour of experiencing this moment here, is obscured by other things, by the fact that winding up this period of my life is fucking with head in ways that have nothing to do with human connection. The three and a half years since I came home from America have been my first stint of trying on this grown-up skin, of being a Worker rather than a Student. And bringing that period to a close I can't help but measure my performance, and find myself sorely lacking. I have not succeeded, as a Grown-Up Worker. It is a skin that doesn't fit me well, and I wear it badly.

I am in the process of training my replacement at the job I have held for three years, and training him feels like going over, with a fine-tooth comb, every level of failure, of friction, of disappointment, of being blocked, of being cut down, of the deep, sick feeling of knowing I'm not doing my job well and having no idea what to do about that.

It is a lost feeling, to face and acknowledge these things, because they leave me thinking: so, what next? What other options, what other ways to live? How can I be in the world? Who am I, and what do I do, and what do I want?

Leaving is partly about holding those questions in me, and hitting 'pause' for a moment on the need to do anything with them. Holding them, being aware of them, and having many different experiences that may or may not inform the answers. Leaving is about ending it, this way of living(working) that has been sitting so badly with me, and hoping that somewhere out there I will find a better way to be.