As Tears Roll By

The crying part of leaving has started.

To be honest I'm surprised that it took this long to really kick in, but it's now here in full effect and I don't think it's in any danger of going away for these last 17 days.

As I say, though, it took a while to come. There's been a few goodbyes at work with people going on holiday and missing my final days, and on Friday I took the opportunity of a quiet moment to clear out my desk. Not a tear shed.

Saturday afternoon I also said goodbye to one of the teams I've been working with for the last couple of years, and nary shed a drop. On Saturday night my two best friends from university came to stay. We went out for dinner and then danced into the wee-small hours, followed by a chilled morning of brunch and watching (bizarrely) High School Musical. When they said goodbye there was a sniff and a small tear, but nothing major...

Then last night at dinner mum finally crumbled. Having prided herself on keeping it all in for months, she was cross at being the first one to crack, but crack she did and she took me with her.

With the tears have come some real revelations. I know that in trying not to be in a state of grief for the entire last three months I've actively suppressed any big 'leaving' feelings for a long time. Just last week I described feeling somewhat numb - like I'd stepped into the boat along time ago and was now simply along for the ride - but now every sinew has woken up and joined the chorus - I'm really really going to miss my family.

This is something I've had to explain to mum. I'm not choosing to leave them - I'd take them all with me if I could - but in the same way as mum knows she can't choose my life, I can't choose theirs. I see that life is easier if your family is near - particularly for those with children. I see what I'm going to miss living apart from them, and not even a long drive away, an ocean away. It's a big big thing.

I also realise that, as much as I've wanted to move to my new city for a long time, I know now for certain that if it were not for my love I wouldn't have the strength to leave my family.

Singing My Heart

If you're the type to get icky with the slushy love stuff, then look away now.

This afternoon, listening through to some new CDs I discovered a song that sang my heart to me in a way that had me almost instantly in tears.

Randy Newman, songwriter extraordinaire, has a new album of wonderfully bluesy songs... but at the very end, he's slipped on his own version of an unabashedly slushy love song he wrote for a movie, and that was originally sung by a lovely Canadian called Chantal.

It took me out. Maybe more-so because of his half singing/half speaking style (which at times reminds me of Kermit the Frog, but somehow still works) seems to add weight to it. Anyway. Here it is: My heart in lyric form.

There's something in your eyes
Makes me want to lose myself
Makes me want to lose myself
In your arms

There's something in your voice
Makes my heart beat fast
Hope this feeling lasts
The rest of my life

If you knew how lonely my life has been
And how low I've felt for so long
If you knew how I wanted someone
To come along
And change my world the way you've done

Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

A window breaks
Down a long, dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But that's alright, 'cause I have you here with me
And I can almost see
Through the dark there's a light

If you knew
How much this moment
Means to me
And how long I've waited for your touch
If you knew
How happy you are making me
I never thought I'd love anyone so much

Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

To Do

23 days from today I'll have said my goodbyes and be waiting to board. Today this doesn't fill me with excitement, but with the kind of fear that freezes me into a little tub of pure procrastination.

Whilst I know that doing even one of the things that's nagging in my mind would totally knock the fear on its ass, I sit here and blog; check emails; drink coffee; think about watching an episode of Heroes; and pretend that it might just go away.

Maybe I should make a list... that always whiles away the hours.

• Check I have travel insurance that covers me for health till December
• Pack the boxes
• Find out if any of my US friends coming over soon can take anything back for me
• Transfer household bills into Sis's name
• Cancel standing orders/direct debits etc
  
• Invoice magazines I've been writing for for nearly a year and who have yet to pay me
• Make appointment with financial fella

You know what, I could actually do most of that today. In fact... I think I will. After I've had a really good look at Facebook.

one step closer, getting brighter

When I first made the decision to move to another city in another country it was about change and community in almost equal measure.

I've needed change for a while, felt in a constant holding pattern with work, life, and in the absence of love. With the aspect of community, while I have some incredible friends here in London, my new city has had a strange feeling of home for a long time. The people there are my people and in their company I somehow become... more.

In recent months there's been another reason to feel it my home, in that my love and I found each other - and he is there. To call it a burgeoning romance would be only partly true in that it feels more like an explosion. The outcomes are sometimes similar too, in that is has been far from easy, but these are stories for other times. Today I post this, a home made video that a nice stranger on YouTube made for this song, which my love sent me this morning.

He marked the email "a song for the 4 weeks":

Wandering through starry skies
And when tomorrow's day arrives
I'll be a morning closer to the
Brightest hour here with you

There She Goes! Here She Comes!

This afternoon I went to my great aunt's funeral. At 93, she'd lived an incredible life and was a wonderful human being, so the service and time after were the perfect mix of sadness and celebration.

In these last days before the off it was also magical to spend time with this wider chunk of my family. People I love dearly, but rarely get to see; mum's cousins and their children - my second cousins - who I feel genuinely lucky to call family.

My great aunt was the only girl among 7 children, and possessed the rare and wonderful combination of a natural grace and a wicked sense of houmour - something I see reflected in my cousin C. The easiest and most generous of people to talk to, after an hour in her presence you feel like you're shining.

She read this poem by Van Dyke, often used at funerals I understand, but it also reminded me of my own coming journey across and ocean, and the pull from either side.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!'

Gone where?

Gone from my sight ... that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she goes!' there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here she comes!’