My Last Night Alone

I literally cannot believe it...this is the last night alone in my apartment. Holy crap. Part of me wants to start jumping around and dancing, and the other part of me simply wants to cry. You see, this means more to me than what it seems. It means the end of a very long fight.

When i think of these years in Atlanta and what the time has been to me, one theme stands out - loneliness. Even with all the wonderful, and I mean truly wonderful friends I have been blessed with, I have spent many days alone and without work, only to live an unfriendly home. Particularly before I was given the people I had longed for, I began my first few years in this unfamiliar city with the most intense loneliness and pain i had ever experienced. To this day no matter how many times I have shared the years of myseterious sickness, empty depression and nagging anxiety with those around me, there is no one who will grasp the burden of a time i felt I did not want to live. As much as I love to have people understand things in my life, this one will remain between me and God. Even I don't comprehend what happened inside of me for bad and for good, in that wilderness. And that's okay. All I can know is that something has been torn me down and replaced in the deepest part of me during a time when God was all I saw and all I could see.

So back to my original statement...this is my last night here alone. My mom flies in to help me move tomorrow, and from then on I am in FL. This is my last night of this long season in Atlanta. I consider now that I am at a place I had always hoped for and dared to imagine - something new, something different; a change from the quiet monotony. Not to say that I have not had the most intimate, special moments between just me and my Father - times that have made me feel in my heart they are the only things that truly matter. It is a feeling I can attain easily only because of the past, and one I did not have prior to it. But I also understand now that it is okay to feel lonely; to long for the company of others and to ache for a change.

I always wondered what I would feel at the end of this. I walked around my room singing random notes to,"This is my last day here alone!" And then I went into my bathroom and suddenly felt like I could cry. The end. Hm. Now that I know its ending I can take it all in. As much as this apartment holds so many hard memories, it has been my own for almost 6 years. I will miss seeing the pool when I've reached the top of the stairs (though i won't miss the stairs:), sitting in my favorite couch watching tv, and especially sitting in front of that one window in my room - the place I have spent every morning in silence and prayer. But I will not miss so much time alone. And what I will miss about it, the carved out time of silence and rest that I can find there, well, I hope to take that with me.

Oddly enough, it doesn't feel strange or shocking to know that the change I never felt was real, is right here. It just feels normal and right. Although I still am reeling from the uncomfortable fact that this is not what I had planned or would have thought was right for me. But my gosh, for someone who felt like my only mission in life was to constantly persevere, this time of relief from an old fight just feels good. Yay for just feeling good. :)