leaving

It's just a few minutes before midnight, and I'm sitting on my bed, willing the clock to stop, to speed up, to do anything but march on in its slow, inexorable rhythm. In six minutes it will be tomorrow, and tomorrow is when I go back to my heart's home.

And for the first time, I don't know how I'll do it.

Earlier tonight I sat around the table in our dining room, all the leaves in, stretched to its longest length to accomodate the wealth of family around it. Turned to a friend beside me and confessed. It's never been like this. I don't know what to do.

It's always been one way or another. Sometimes I'm bursting at the seams, so ready to get on a plane that I can hardly spare a thought for those I'm saying goodbye to. And the rest of the times that I've travelled, whether from here going there or from there coming here, I've done so with a heart torn to pieces for the place I'm leaving behind.

This time I'm cut clean in two, and it doesn't seem possible that I'll be able to get on that plane tomorrow and it doesn't seem possible that I'm still sitting here, late at night, alone on my bed.

This has been the most beautiful summer of my life, and I say that with all the pain and uncertainty included. The list of things I no longer take for granted has expanded far past family and friends and a roof over my head, and I am so grateful for the chance I've been given to live my life like this. I'm still in awe every time I pick up a jug of milk, every time I sit down on the floor to play with my nephew, every time I get back up without pain. When he reaches out his hand to lead me off for our next adventure, I can give him mine without wondering whether he'll hurt me. I can finally say that I'm ready to go back to work and not secretly question whether I'll make it through a shift.

I'm ready to go back, but I can't see how I can leave. This all feels so melodramatic, but anyone who's spent time on the ship can relate to the abrupt shift I'm about to undergo. I'm going to trade in the stability and predictability of life in my hometown for a world where friends come and go with every departing flight, where one day is almost never like the next, and where not even the floor is steady beneath my feet. Yet again, I've bought a one-way ticket to Africa, signed up for two more years of this constant whirlwind.

I'd have to be crazy to want this.

I'd have to be crazy not to.