Ends and Beginnings

Mom and Dad arrived in Evanston tonight. I haven't seen them yet. I'm going to have breakfast with them tomorrow morning.

I finally clipped my fingernails. It's very liberating. I can't exactly explain why it's liberating, but everything feels so much more functional. The biggest difference is the necessary change in orientation of my thumbs when I text on my tiny little QWERTY keyboard. Not such a big difference.

When I get home, I'm going to sleep in my bed with my puppy. On Sunday morning, I'm going to make crepes for Laura and for Christina and for whoever else wants crepes.

But tomorrow, I don't know what I'm going to do. Tomorrow, I am going to turn in my paper, my signed approval form, my final timesheet, and my office key. Tomorrow I'm going to put Mike's movies and Mike's tupperware on Mike's desk. Tomorrow I'm going to do a little more packing. Tomorrow I am going to have breakfast with my parents and lunch with Paola.

Tomorrow everything is going to feel final.

I don't know why I always feel sad when things change. There came a point during this program when I was ready to come home. There came a time when I was frustrated and confused and felt terribly, terribly alone. And now I'm starting to feel all nostalgic, pointing out to myself that this is the last time I'm going to do that, and this is the last time I'm going to see this.

I still want a picture of the Chicago skyline at night across the lake. Since I have one more night here, I might get it tomorrow night. I hope I remember.

The room looks progressively barer as I pick things up and pack them away. It's weird for me to leave. Things feel familiar here now; does that mean that for a disorienting one or two days, things will feel alien at ESF? Will I not fit back the way I used to?

One always wonders about these things.

So here I am, tired and needing to go to sleep to wake up in order to see my parents over breakfast in the morning, and I'm trying to somehow make this bizarre pent-up emotion in me spill out into writing. The fact that it isn't exactly working makes me think that maybe the emotion I'm feeling isn't something I want to face right now.

It's all wrapped up with my future.

I think maybe I'll sign off now, because I'm tired and getting to where I feel like I could just drop off, and the later it gets, the more likely I am to get emotional over something stupid, like leaving this place after having been here for a summer.

I need to figure out how to make these feelings come out to play.