The countdown began in earnest today.
I knew that I was going to have to leave just before three months had passed: it’s the law, and it’s best for wedding planning, and before I came here I had not realized just how much I would not want to leave, and so….
It’s just that it’s come out of nowhere: this sudden accounting of days, weekends, moments, walks, errands, markets, dinners, visitors…this realization that they are finite, at least for now. All I seem to be able to do lately is count.
There is plenty to look forward to. There are all kinds of party plans in the works, and although my dress shopping is done, everyone else’s is just beginning, and I get to…
I can’t get as excited as I thought that I would be, is the problem.
And so I look lower: I can pick up a few choice electronics at a 30% discount, and transfer money to pay down this year’s student loans (they have to be paid from a U.S. account–and how very considerate of my homeland’s currency to tank at such a thoroughly convenient time). I can get DVD’s of television shows that we don’t have here, and stock up on allergy and indigestion medications without confessing my deepest, darkest secrets to the pharmacist who is on a first-name basis with my dog.
My dog will replace me with some other mother-figure.
Stop it, Neurotic Self.
There are upsides, is all I’m saying. And yet…I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to tough it out; I want the next time that I leave this apartment to be in a rental car–or maybe a train–with Nick (and Jolie, until we find her a good boarding kennel) on the way to some other amazing place. Like Florence, or Bruges, or Mykonos, or whatever. I would happily cope with the lack of M&M’s (except peanut) for as long as it takes to get to stay.
And yet.
Twelve days and counting.
It’s not nearly enough.