I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yearsteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. — Beryl Markham

Last night, I had a dream of the entirety of a path that my life could have been, a part of my life that I have now had to let go. Awaking confused and a bit heartbroken from what I knew I had to do, I know that there is a reason for doing this now rather than later, and yet, it still does not make it any easier letting this girl disappear from my life, my thoughts, in order to move forward. The connection I shared with this girl–this young woman–I somehow grew to love over a short period of time before leaving on this incredible journey has always been a part of my daily thoughts. I knew from the first time we shared with one another painful parts of our lives that we have never spoken of so freely, becoming vulnerable to one another beyond words, that there was a connection that went deeper than just a surface friendship. The almost daily adventurous trips to Starbucks where I saw the flicker of a smile for the first time from her that will be forever ingrained in my memory as she stood across the room from me and our eyes met through a small crowd, is just one of the thousands of small details I did not get a chance to share with her before I left. Singing and dancing to the tune of Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles, which ironically became “our song” over helplessly being forced to watch the cinematic genius of White Chicks that played as we sat confined, unable to move while at a plasma donation facility in Aurora, Colorado on a cold winter morning, I cannot help but smile whenever I hear that song. The countless lunches we shared, one of which that went to the degree that only her and I will share and all of the various informal types of communication that when the notification alert made me aware of her secret messages, it always gave me another reason to smile. The cheesy head bopping, singing to the top of our lungs, this, this is the person she should could so easily bring out of me daily, and for that I cannot thank her enough for her strength, for her friendship, for her ability to know me enough that she never asked me to stay, but could see how important this journey was for me in order to live out that which I continue to seek out with every day that I am living life to the fullest. You will always have a place in my heart. Shmurnt murnt.
