Goodbye

I'm writing from my home in Massachusetts for the last time. Jack and I are loading up our car and driving away into the sunset today. My bookshelves are empty, boxes are stacked across our kitchen, and one lone computer remains unpacked. The guinea pigs snuffle in their hay. We will have to leave them behind for now, and I wonder if they'll even notice that I am gone. They've been my little buddies for so long. This house has been my home for more than twenty years; I'm sitting in the bedroom I've had since I was eleven.

The reality, the finality, hasn't sunk in yet. I'm waiting to feel sad.

Pictured here is a tissue-box cover that a family friend made for us. It's a miniature replica of our little gray house. It has the red brick steps where my mother and I waited for the bus on my first day of kindergarten, and it has the white porch where I was photographed once as a toddler and again on my prom night. The windows where our many cats have slept in the sun over the years have been done in black, with our pink shutters present and accounted for.

Jack and I are taking it with us when we go. I think it's important to remember where you've come from, since it shapes so much of where you're going. Leaving Massachusetts is my chance to have a fresh start, a clean slate, but I want to remember that there were good times here, too; that it wasn't all just sickness and sadness.

They tell you to think positively, to find the silver lining. Here I am, at 2:56 AM, searching.

#mentalhealth #Massachusetts