it's real

Well, it is happening. We are moving whether I'm ready, packed or emotionally able to comprehend this fact. The biggest step of all (selling our house) finally came to a close yesterday. It has left me with an automatic sense of relief but also with a great deal of sadness and melancholy. Not for this house in particular, but for all it has represented to us. I am a documentar of all things through pictures, so I'd hoped to be able to get that final picture of the big old sold sign on our listing. Instead while driving by I noticed a moving truck in the driveway and the MLS sign completely gone. Vanished. Almost like we'd never been there at all, lived there, or breathed there. Like a part of us is just erased.

Our new digs, "the little farmhouse" is removed. It's quiet (inside) and it's a perfect little in-between for the next phase of our lives. It also gives me a great deal of time to think. I have been so focused on getting to this very point that I haven't paid much attention to my sadness at leaving but more importantly to the impact that it is also having on my friends. I've glibly talked and shared thinking somehow that this sadness would just be my own. I mean, my friends still have each other, their lives, their kids lives and their routines. I'll step out of their lives. Sure, It will be hard for a few days but then life will continue, and things will go on their merry way. The space that I have left will be filled by others or friendships that already exist will tighten.
 Really it's all about ME and MY pain of moving, right?

There is one big problem, life will go on for them with a big MINUS. Me. Selfishly, I haven't thought or permitted myself to think that this is hard for those who love me. By nature I want to apologize and "make it all better". But this isn't one of those times that I can do that. It won't be all better for a long while. I'm leaving and it's hard. For them. For me. For friendships that will need to stand the test of time and geography. I will to a degree have the gift of being able to imagine their lives, their day-to-day, their geography. If someone writes to me about a certain land mark in a story I will know where and how that fits into the story. No matter how much I explain, write, picture, or share, they won't be able to see my new geography or day-to-day. In this, their loss is greater then mine. Like our MLS listing I'll have disappeared. I don't have words of comfort. It sucks. It hurts. For all.