Fiending for the Freak Out

Along with all good sides, there is always its counterpart… a balancing down side. I try to be the most positive person I can be and focus only on the good of any situation. But I can’t help but get a little nostalgic and even a little angry at times these days when I think about how this move will cause me to leave so many wonderful things behind. Not forever. But a forever goodbye or a just-for-now goodbye… they are all just as hard to say.

I have been having a really hard time since last week when we found out about Grandma. I can tell you that if Alice Cooper would have thrown me a chicken, I would have bitten its head off last weekend and showed him how it’s really done. I yelled, I cried, I pouted. I threw tantrums and stamped my feet and held my breath until my face turned three shades of blue. It really wasn’t pretty. My emotions are just all over the place. That is probably to be expected but I just hate losing control. I am sure that my family was hoping that I would at least learned to show a little grace when things aren’t going my way. Too bad. So sad. Pffft.

It isn’t all about the diagnosis either. That just compounds it. Sometimes – most of the time – I am just not one that knows how to hide what she is feeling. I read like an open book. I can deal with that.

In these final weeks, people have been making their plans for our last hoorahs together. Sounds like fun! Give me a drink or two and I will be clinging to you and telling you how very much “I wuuuuv u.” I may even kiss you. But only if you are a lucky duck.

I am going to miss my mommy and how we talk every night, even when one of us isn’t really in the mood for chatting. I’m going to miss my friends and our lunches, coffee dates, shopping excursions and any other indulgent soirees we partake in. I’m going to miss not meeting my new niece or nephew until Christmas. That’s if we can even afford to make the trip back then. I could go on forever and ever about the people I will miss. Because I love each and every person I have gotten to know and trust and call a friend. One of my oldest and dearest friends used to say “out of sight, out of mind.” He’s lucky that has never been the case. And it never will be for anyone else that calls me a friend either. The bond I feel with all of my friends is stronger than distance. At least I really hope that is the case for both ends.

There is also leaving the security of being implicitly familiar with my surroundings. I was walking down Washington Street in Old Town yesterday and smelled my favorite wings from Southside and the best brick oven pizza in town at Faccia Luna. Even the Chicken Out on the corner smelled good and I freaking hate that place! Soon I won’t be walking through town and bump into friends that I have made on every corner. I won’t be so easy as knowing that the fastest way to DC in the mornings is on the GW Parkway. I won’t be able to walk past the fountain where we got engaged or go to the place where we first met. I won’t be frequenting the bar where I made my first Virginia friends anymore. I will be lost in someone else’s world. I will have to start all over again to make it mine.

Leaving my job means I am giving up my financial independence. I will have to rely on someone else and relinquish the control I have over the way I choose to spend my hard-earned dime. It won’t be mine anymore to be frivolous when I want to. I will wake up in the morning and have to figure out what to do with myself, trying not to frivolously fritter my days away. It won’t be as easy as being obliged to go to work and earn a paycheck. I will have to learn the values of other types of paydays… the ones were the thing you earned was strictly for your heart and soul’s benefit and not your bank accounts. It is going to be hard letting go of conceptions that I am worth nothing if I am not working to benefit us monetarily. I’m terrified that we won’t have enough money and I will have to go back to work before we return, crushing so many of my plans.

While I am thrilled about school, I am also scared as hell that I will lose the nerve and not finish yet another thing that I have started. What if I have forgotten how to study and can no longer pull a decent grade? I have watched my dear friend JL go back to school. I know how very hard she works and what she has sacrificed to go back. I’m afraid I won’t have the stamina that she has shown and I will quit after one semester because I just can’t hack it. I’m afraid of being a quitter.

What if I can’t make any friends? I fear that no one will like me. I’ve been told more than once that I wasn’t exactly a favorite upon a first meeting. Either I become the terribly shy person who sits there in silence or, more likely, I become completely obnoxious and boisterous. No middle ground can be found. What if they can’t get past this and see who I really am, just a scared little girl inside who feels the need to constantly overcompensate? I don’t know how I would handle not having a single person to hang out with when KH is busy doing his real stuff in the real world. And what if I just continually make a complete ass out of myself? I don’t like the thought of drastically standing out now and I would hate it if people were pointing and laughing on top of it.

There are so many positive things to be grateful and excited for. And there is still the negative side that is constantly questioning the decisions I have made and will make when we get there, as hidden as I can keep it. Please allow me this freak out period. Forgive my anger, my tears and all of my frustrations. I am trying to get a grip on the crazy. I apologize now for anything I may say or do over the last few weeks. You have permission to slap me… but only if you feel it is absolutely necessary to get through. Above all, please love me anyway and try to understand me. Maybe even buy me a Krispy Kreme. Or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles popsicle from the nice man who drives his truck through our neighborhood every night. Whatever you do, please… just don’t throw a chicken my way.