The Beginning of the End

Finally, there was this on Friday afternoon:

I couldn't stop smiling. Thursday my dad would have been 70 so I went to the cemetery to visit his grave.  Someone else has been there recently and changed out the flowers.  Just like that.....it feels like a knife is shoved in my heart and all that pain is there again. Something I hope to avoid when I'm gone from here.  Too many reminders.  I saw this recently and it really hit home: 

That's the truth.  Explains a lot right there. Next week I go to my future home to get away and to look for a place to live.  I think this time will be different.  It won't be a place I'm visiting this time but the place I'm about to belong to for good in the most binding way possible.  I won't own it....it already owns me.  The worst day there might be the best day I have here these days.  

One thing I know....if you didn't give me the time of day here, proved you were nothing more than an acquaintance, or let me down for your own selfishness time and time again you can certainly forget coming out of the wood work when I'm there and expecting ANYTHING. The past is staying exactly where it belongs......here in the past.  Time is running out and I'm not holding my breath either.  

Some places here I feel the need to say goodbye to.  Some people here are already over the wall in that place of goodbye.  The rest it isn't goodbye.....just won't see them all the time the way I do now.  Our connection and friendship isn't going anywhere.  

Last weekend I said goodbye to the place that almost was more of a home than the house I grew up in.  But that was just growing up through the years.  I grew up as a person when I went away to college.  I certainly did not leave the person I came as.  Naive, young, not expecting anything really, and definitely having no clue as to what was coming.  I left jaded, angry at some things, sorry for a lot, not the innocent believing in everyone anymore, but knowing who I was and what my interests were.  Good or bad, I wouldn't trade that time for anything.  Some things I might want to have done differently but isn't that just the way life is?  If we knew how things would turn out would we make the decisions we do? I know even to this day I would try my best to be less of a black or white type person and try to see the humanity in others that make things more shades of gray than just black or white. One thing I can say is that I never give up.  I would try to be more open and forget all the times I really tried that did not get the response expected or wanted. I don't know.  You can't change the past but you certainly can navigate your future. 

Saying goodbye to that time in my life.....

 First dorm I ever lived in.  Jan live diagonal across the hall.  Won't be there much longer...it is being torn down.  

I see my dorm room window up there.  What times and memories we had here.  

One of the places you could find us at a whole lot....the Humanities Building.  Music  was my love even then. 

Jan quipped "Paved paradise and put up a parking lot" when we went here.  She was right.  That was our paradise even though we didn't know it.  Used to be a grassy football sized field that we practiced on every day.  But it was so much more than than that.  That place was the beginning of several dreams for me and things unexpected.  Love being one of them, a second chance more than once, laughter, a place where I gained confidence, and so much more.  Going back there and started all over again knowing what I know now would be surreal but nice.  

I enjoy climbing things these days.....trees, stone walls, banyan tree roots, and this sign apparently.  

 Can't believe how many years ago since it all began there.  How did we get here on this sign all grown up and looking back at our lives.  

Moving off campus into this townhome was a life changing thing.  Times made a whole new change and everything went in different directions.  This is the place I feel like I grew up the most in.  The place I still miss sometimes although I know it is that girl I miss the most.  That girl that needs to be the best she was with the wisdom the person I am now has.  

There is a lot I leave behind in a few short months.  It makes you wonder why there are so many people and things you just don't care about but then there are those you can't forget even if they did forget you or they try to anyway.  The things you'd say.  The things you wish you could say.  The things someone would just once give you a chance to say.......that they would just listen and believe.  The courage to say those things.  I'm not holding my breath but maybe before I leave I might get that?