Rush of my Heart

My heart is heavy this night.
Remember the wreckage of a bedroom I wrote from last time? I almost miss it now, compared to the emptiness of tonight. My room echoes. It’s not supposed to do that.
It’s amazing how quickly a home can become nothing more than a maze of walls. It feels as if all the life of the past years has been sucked clean out of it. All the smells are gone – instead of cookies baking, it smells like dust and chemical cleaners. Instead of the happy sounds of a family, you hear male voices directing traffic. I’m seeing the house from different angles now, standing in the gaps left by huge furniture pieces and realizing how they’ve seen the world this whole time. My life is packed up in a moving van..as if it’s a rolling parcel just waiting to be presented to another location.
I’m laying under a small pile of blankets on my floor with my cat, who I roped into sleeping in my room. I’ve never done that to her before, but tonight, I didn’t like the idea of being alone.
Today was full of work. Wonderful people came to help and get the overwhelming job done, and there was a steady stream of traffic throughout the day wearing a path in the floorboards.
All last minute errands were finished, and amazingly, so was just about everything else.
Now, I can finally say that all the goodbyes have been said. Honestly, it all feels a bit surreal. We’ve been planning this moment now for weeks, and now that it’s here, it feels like the dress rehearsal rather than the real deal. Perhaps when we actually pull away from our home, it will hit me. I hope it will, and I wish it wouldn’t at the same time. It hurts.
Oh, California. I’m in the process of writing a song about you. I find myself waking up at odd hours in the night, humming into the voice memo recorder and dreaming in strangely bright colors beneath a sweltering sun.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new adventure. A new chapter. A new life. I am excited. I am terrified. I am sore at heart.
I could go on and on describing the experiences I’ve had here, the changes that have taken place, the heartbreaks and happinesses that have occurred in this bay area city — but I won’t. I think really, I’ve said all I’ve needed to say.
Tomorrow we go North to see what awaits us.
Tomorrow, it begins.