The Hardest Thing About Leaving

We are moving forward. Days are dragging on, but somehow weeks are flying by. We are down to eighteen days remaining. Eighteen. I just cannot believe how close it is.

It has been an overwhelming few months, but I am starting to see the finish lines to what has been eating my time, energy, and attention. Knowing that there are reasonable chunks of tasks that can be completed and will be coming to a close brings a lot of peace of mind. Monday signals the end of my school year. The following Sunday is the Official Move Out Day. The weekend after that is my last day of work at GBBC and Hunter's graduation. And two days later, we're leaving.

Just like that. Leaving.

My emotions are all over the place but my busyness has helped me stay distracted from that topsy-turvy nervousness and the sadness at leaving my family behind again. Family is the hardest group of people to stay with and the hardest people to leave. My sight is becoming blurry with stinging, salty tears as I type this, particularly thinking of leaving my siblings behind because as we grow up, we change so much and so quickly. The year I was gone it seemed that all of them became different people. I just do not know how to miss those moments in their lives and be okay with it.

I'm talking about the moments that make you who you are: when you tell a bad decision no, or say yes to a mistake and grow from it, or have the best night laughing with friends (the kind you remember for always), or any number of those times when you feel "infinite" and it becomes what molds your memories. So many people do not get to love their siblings the way I love mine. When I say I would die for them, there is no hesitation in my heart that I would give every last thing I have to save them, help them, grow them. Each is such a unique person with incredible talent, beauty, and destiny. And if you've met them even once, even briefly, you know that too. How do I just get in a car and drive away? How do I move forward with my life, knowing that they are moving forward with theirs and it might not be in a parallel direction anymore?

As long as I have known these four incredible people, we have all been moving in the same direction: up. We were growing up, from one grade to the next, from single digits to double digits, middle school to high school, up clothes sizes... just up. But I hit it first: that place where things are not moving "up" so much as across. Getting older is leveling out just a bit and I am making choices for my life that move me out and forward. Hunter is beginning to do the same and now every other year, so will each of the others. So as we move out and forward, can we still be together? Can we still be connected? Can we avoid the awkward quiet and fumbling for conversation that comes between normal friends after extended time apart? Can we still be involved and interact without having that deathly distance kill the intimate camaraderie that is so unexplainable and so rare? I hope so. God, with all my heart, I hope so. Because these are the people I love the most and I know my life would fade so quickly and lose so much color if something were to tear us apart.

There it is. That's the hardest thing about leaving. I feel like I am abandoning them and it's hard not to hate myself for it. It's not comforting to be told that it will "all be okay", that I have to go my own direction because it's "natural" and "healthy," that our relationships will be fine, etcetera etcetera. I'm supposed to be here. I'm their older sister who has done her very best to love them, protect them, and encourage them amidst her own chaotic learning. I have made mistakes, but I do not love them any less or want to be away from them anymore.

I will be okay. I know I will because I have been before. But today it just hit me and my independence tastes more bitter than sweet through these thoughts.

{So if any of you darlings read this, I love you. I love you so very much, with all my heart, and I always will. I'm here for you no matter what, no matter when. Forever. -Your Sister}