days...

The countdown begins. 22 days...and counting. I wonder if I'm ready. The change, the slap in the face, that lurks just around the corner, although expected, looms. I tell myself I'm ready, that this is good - necessary even. That I need to tear myself away from the safety blanket that has developed into its own independent concept, life, existence. To tear myself away means to tear a part of myself away - to turn away from something that has been me for years. Does it mean growing up, or growing older, or growing on, or just growing? It means diving, plunging, into an unknown blackhole that contains and offers opportunities beyond my imagination's abilities. At this point, though, there is no where but upward.

The words shimmer and quake in the back of my mind like a bad case of deja vus. Living one day to the next has it's perks until you are literally living one day to the next in every sense of the word... Wondering if what the day's work produces will pay the bills and the cashier at the grocery store, and wondering if there's room for a splurge at Starbucks for those luxurious treats. They must put some sort of addictive agent in recipes; I can't be so easily swayed! Anything is better than this.... Home - family, comfort, safety, security - is better than this.

Guilt, questions, doubts have mingled and tangled and twisted into some semblance of hope. Hope is there. Those Sunday school verses come back like a faint friendly shadowed memory. "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He leads me beside green pastures.... Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me....He restores my soul."

Someday I will look at the stars again and wish and dream and hope... For now my heart aches for what I will leave behind, but surges for what awaits me so many miles away. A future awaits. A new life. A new existence. A new reputation. A new shadow. A new...self. Still so many questions.... So many dreams just bursting at the seams to ring true with a new melody. Success awaits, and struggle will be left behind to dwindle and shrivel and pass away.......