One Week to Go...
Actually, it’s a bit less than a week until we fly to New York, and everything’s becoming very real. The imminence of everything
starting
and changing my life beyond belief means there’s not much room in my head to think about anything else. It’s too full of aeroplanes. City lights. Skyscrapers. Foreign accents.
On Friday I’ll be flying from Edinburgh – where I’ve been spending the last month with my family – to Gatwick, so that Phil and I are together for a few days to sort any last things that need sorting. On Tuesday the 8
th
, we fly to the US.
In all honesty, intermingled with all of the fizz and excitement and nerves, I feel a bit weird about leaving Edinburgh. It’s just started to feel like home again, with its lilting accents and unassuming beauty hidden in shadowy corners. I think this part is always the most difficult – you’ve had months of preparations and goodbyes, but what’s coming is so unknown that it’s difficult to find solace in just yet. You’re in that scary, nerve-wracking, uncanny limbo realm. You just have to tough out the weirdness and niggling sadness for the last couple of days, make the most of everyone you have, and then you’re plunged headfirst into the newness, and your mind-set alters completely again.
This time next week, I’ll be waking up in a Harlem apartment. I’ll be walking through the streets of New York, probably craning my neck to marvel at the sheer size of everything and clinging on to Phil’s hand so I don’t get swept along by the thrums of people. I’ll have my face pressed to festive store windows, icy condensation forming on the glass. I’ll be filling up my memory card with countless pictures of familiar yet astounding sights (note to self: please, please remember to clear your memory card. And pick up a USB). I’ll be processing the fact that this is just the first stop. The first stop on a road trip with no fixed end date.
Sitting in an Edinburgh coffee shop nursing a cooling flat white, it feels like an almost impossible concept. It feels like I’m just carrying on. Like for the next week, I’ll keep going to sleep in that huge, cloud-like bed with the cat curled up beside me, then waking up and working away, the only presence of something huge being the growing bubble at the edge of my consciousness.
I’ll miss my family and friends at home. But as someone so philosophically reminded me recently, it’s not goodbye, it’s just a little bit longer until next time. And in reality, it’s been a long time since I’ve lived at home in Edinburgh, so I’m just going to be a little further away. Despite what my brain tells me, I won’t be
gone.
Just a longer plane ride away.
I’m not sure if much of this makes sense, but I can’t wait to read back on it in a few weeks, months, a year’s time. I can’t wait to click back through this online journal and say “wow – at this point you didn’t even know that X would happen, and that you’d meet Y, and see Z. You have so, so much to look forward to.”
So all that’s left for the next few days is to carry on, live with and accept the weirdness, appreciate my time with people. And after that, well. There’s only one thing left to do.
Go.
