Nerves

I know - I have been bad. Not writing anything all week, just after I promised this blog would get more exciting.

The truth is, I feel drained. Now that the kangaroo's out of the bag, and I celebrated last Friday by letting Frittany out of the cage (things got messy, my 21 year old brother sent me home early, bless him), the excitement of having a secret plan is gone. Don't get me wrong, I'm still excited! I talk to my Aussie counterparts every day, and when I think about finally seeing them again (it's been over 2 years since Denton and I had our last reunion) it makes me so giddy I can barely sit still!

But the sadness of leaving my life here is starting to set in. I've been thinking about what I can (what I should) write about, the memories of my time here that stand out the most in my mind. Expect something fairly poignant and ridiculous next week.

I feel like I'm caught up in a current; I was relaxing in a bathtub, and then when I decided to pull the plug I shrunk down to Polly Pocket size and am slowly but surely getting sucked down the drain. That's a fairly poor metaphor, as I don't look at travelling to an amazing country as a drain. It's just that I feel a bit powerless. I've been counting down the days, willing time to pass faster, for so long. Now that I'm down to the wire I'm wishing time would slow down. I have things to do! I need to spend time with friends, to gaze around at the city, to walk in the snowy mountains.

I'm also catching myself being tempted to ignore those I care about. When I moved away from Winnipeg, I just stopped socializing with most people, sitting around my lonely apartment until it was moving day. I've never been good with goodbyes. I know I've been trying to distance myself from those I will miss the most, so that my leaving becomes a gradual fade out instead of an abrupt absence. But that's not the way I want to do this. I want to be open to every experience and say what needs to be said and make as many memories as is humanly possible in 13 days. (AH! 13 days! Just had a tiny heart attack!)

So I will think these thoughts as I approach the weekend. Tonight - performing a 5 min piece for a friend's fundraiser event. I did one of these shindigs last spring, and as you hard-core stalkers may recall, I was quite nervous about it. I didn't even want to say anything beforehand in case I was a failure, and I could pretend it had never happened! I feel so very different than I did even a few months ago. Comfortable and confident in my own skin, for one thing. So I think tonight is going to be great fun! Plus my brother will be joining me, which I love! I didn't realize how nice it is having family close by until he moved here a few months ago.

Then Saturday is my birthday/going away party and I am much less excited this year than I have been in previous years. Probably because I know I'm going to start weeping as soon as I have a few glasses of wine. Well, bring on the waterproof mascara! I am so fortunate to have experienced so much in 25 years. I can't remember who said/wrote this but it's one of my favorites:
"So wide a sweep, so narrow an experience. To have lived. To have been alive."