The Beginning of the End

So here I am again. Leaving for the airport in 6.5 hours with little sleep expected. It has been a bustling day, defined—as too often I think my life is—by to-do lists. I’ve done far too good a job of ignoring those to-do lists this break, however; now is the hectic time that accounts for that leniency (aka laziness).

Today I gloried in being able to drive. Windows down in the 60 degree weather (is it really January?!?). Reading with my dog curled up next to me. Being hugged by my mom. Running errands with my little brother. Glorying in the vast land of convenient good deals that is Walmart. Looking up at a non-empty night sky for once, reacquainting myself with my beloved big dipper.

I feel sometimes that this lifestyle of commuting between states and homes requires too much stocking up, too many goodbyes, a lot of time in-between rather than in time. Looking back at my first year of college and how exciting my flights to school were, I feel so jaded and old now. Somehow I’ve changed and grown between then and now. Somehow, despite myself, I take how blessed I am for granted.

Tomorrow—er, today—I go to California, to the land that may soon be my home. I’m very stressed about the test that required this trip in the first place; I have to take teacher certification tests in California before moving there this summer.

I’m struggling to process anything and everything, probably because I am so tired. Still, I realize this is big. California. It sounds like the name of some foreign country, an exotic land, a place that wouldn’t be my home.

But in all likelihood it will be in just six months. Here I am on the verge of something big: in less than one week I will have commenced my very last semester of college. I will be “an adult” by one of its various definitions and hallmarks.

I want to go. I don’t want to leave. I want to draw a little triangle between Kansas, DC, and California and plop myself in the middle. I want everyone I know and care about to be accessible, for no home to be an ending or a final farewell.

Just help me, I pray, to appreciate this last semester for what it is. I have some stressful things ahead of me (i.e. writing and finishing my thesis), but this is it.

This is it.