Good news: NO MORE MOE’S!!!!! I am gloriously unemployed and free to get real rest.
Weird news: I have three more weeks and then everything changes.
With each friend I spend one last crazy day with, it hits me a little bit more: the next time I see these people, I will be totally different and so will they. Eleven months is a long time. A lot happens in eleven months, and you notice it a lot more when you’re apart for that long.
Every summer when I worked at camp, I’d come home after a few weeks or a month, and my mom and all my friends at home would say “You’re SO tan!” I’d never notice it until they pointed it out, because I was there for all the transition, but everyone else can see it right away because it’s so drastically different than the last time they saw me.
This next year will be a lot like that. Only I will have changed on the inside this time. People might not notice right away(I mean, I’ll probably still come home super tan, and being such a picky eater I’m pretty sure I’ll look like a skeleton too), but they’ll figure it out eventually.
I sort of love the idea of that, but at the same time it’s scary.
I love my friends. This pre-launch time has reminded me how much they love me too, and I love that…but what happens when I’m gone for eleven months? I love too many people to keep up with ALL of them. How many will come back to figure out if they love the new version of me as much as they love the me they know now? Will I have to start from scratch and make all new friends?
But that’s a long way away. At the end of the day, I’m really more of a cross-the-bridge-when-you-come-to-it girl. For now I’m so loving all the memories I’m making with people as I say goodbye to them and hug them for what I know will be the last time in forever, I can’t even make myself worry about what it’ll be like to see them for the first time in forever.
The best advice I got from an alumni racer at training camp was to be intentional with my goodbyes, not to avoid them just because they’re sad. She said the sadness would be worth not having to go through the first couple weeks of the Race regretting all the people I didn’t spend time with before leaving.
I can already tell she was right. When I’m sitting in Bolivia missing my friends, I won’t be wishing I’d hung out with them more before I left; I’ll be thanking God for all the last fun times we got to have.
I’m actually learning to love goodbyes. Who would have thought? I’m already changing and I haven’t even left yet. 🙂
