the move

seems that everytime i leave someplace it gets harder and harder, because the older i get, the less i want to uproot and start over. so i am sitting in the middle of the mess that is my apartment, enjoying some of the last quiet moments in my building, listening to the raindrops patter against the window and the leaves rustling on my lovely tree outside. i'm saying good-bye to chicago, the only place that has been home to me since my father uprooted us from miami. i have been here 7 years, and although the winters were always a struggle, this city took me in and treated me well.

i'm packing up my life and driving out to california. i'm moving to seal beach...orange county, where i will live in an overpriced 1BR apartment half a block from the ocean. i'm hoping this proximity to the water will make it feel like home, even though the water out there is cold, and the breeze coming off the water isn't thick and salty like the tropics...it's still the ocean. to be honest, i'm scared. i'm scared of being so far away from everything that is familiar to me. i hope my proximity to the ocean will comfort me...i hope when i leave the windows open i can hear the waves crashing, cause it's going to be a tough year, for so many reasons. i start surgery internship...without the comfort of knowing i have a permanent place in the program. i will have to prove myself. prove myself while i am learning how to take care of really sick people. people sick enough to need to be opened up with a knife. i am excited about it, but i know it's going to be hard. and i'm glad to be getting away from chicago, but it certainly is a big move. it doesn't feel like i'm going home...it's going to take a while to feel like that...i still barely know the difference between northern and southern california.

anyway, i don't know if it's the jetlag or the butterflies in my stomach, but something is keeping me up at night. i was up until 6:15 in the morning last night. and i am exhausted, but i have to pack. i spent last night googling my college boyfriend who cheated on me. he has written 3 or 4 books since college...on economic development in southeast asia. he's a visiting professor at all of these universities. before all the nasty shit went down with us (i.e. before he slept with someone else multiple times) i told him that he better not ever lose his passion for education in the 3rd world, he better not sell out and just be a drug rep. he was better than that. all this time i have been hoping that he was a complete sell-out in every aspect of his life cause he totally sold me out, but he's not. he's doing amazing things, and he's an expert in his field...educating stuggling economic and educational systems in vietnam and singapore and laos. and for some reason that makes me feel like shit, because he's doing something great with his life, and he's not a horrible person. but what he did to me was so horrible so after all these years i still struggle to reconcile these truths.

leaving chicago means leaving all of those memories i have with him...and that to me is a huge relief, because i still think of him everytime i pass certain streets or restaurants or stadiums. and i won't have those associations anymore.

life just moves...and some things just stick, no matter how hard you try to let them go.

the good and the bad.

better than nothing sticking at all.