T minus Three Days and Counting...

It's the first of the last nights that I will have to work, ever. I'm tired, I've been packing for 3 days, and I'm not sure if it will all get done on time.

In the past, I've joked that you get to a certain point in the packing, where you could just decide to say "screw it" and take a scoop shovel and empty the remainder of your belongings into a dumpster. I'm not quite there yet.

In moving, the executive decision was reached to give away the lions share of my belongings, and start afresh, in the Golden State. Reason being, that it was going to be more expensiver (hi jayleigh!) to move everything, than those things cost in the first place!!! So I was trying to sell things, now I'm trying to give them away. Today I found my wedding gown. It wasn't even hard to not look at it. I put it in the Goodwill pile.

Somehow, I can't seem to leave the wedding album behind. Although I have not looked at it in over a year... today my therapist mentioned that it is part of "my story" and someday, I may regret not seeing myself as a young and beautiful woman... I may miss seeing my folks when they were dressed beautifully, and especially seeing my idealistic self. Full of expectations and hope. Full of anticipation and ideas. Full of anxiety and completely terrified. Of what I was afraid would happen if I wasn't a "good girl" and of what did happen, even though I was.

So my story stays but the trappings of my wedding will finally go. Along with many of the clothes that I owned when I was married. And gifts that although I really loved them, I will part with, because they were from him. And furniture. And shoes. And thoughts, feelings, and memories that although long dormant, I have not forgotton in the two places I've lived since divorcing nearly a year ago.

M.W. and I have talked at length about the ways in which one grieves at the loss of a relationship. He grieved little after his divorce. I still grieve. Not for him... but for the fact that I could not, no matter how hard I tried, keep the relationship from failing. Because I don't want him back. But I'm still mad that I had to go through all of that.

But I'm not mad that I am moving to California on Friday. I'm not mad that I'm living my dream, taking my future by the b@lls, and making the most of everything I have!