7.20

I woke up this morning and I was alone. I walked into the kitchen, where normally your faces would be waiting for me. Faces I will never erase. Faces I woke up to every morning for 10 short months. It's difficult to describe the emotions this goodbye brought for me, and at this very moment i feel kind of numb to it. But when I was laying there on the floor with Jon during our last hour, watching the strips of flickering daylight fade from the walls of his mom's rented apartment, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the gut. He held me while I cried and drooled all over him for at least the fourth time this week. I looked back at Keeley the moment we got to the airport to drop me off. Tears were streaming down her face and I thought to myself, "how is it possible I've found so much love here?" I'm so deeply sad that this chapter of my life is over. I fell completely in love with a group of people and let them become my world for a while, and i will never forget about that world. Now, we have all gone back to being hundreds of miles away from each other and it feels like a piece of my heart is missing. But while I am sad, I also feel a strange sense of peacefulness. I got to live in this secret little Americorps world, where laughter and pain and discomfort and joy were always plentiful. I got to let the love from my teammates change me. I always cling so tightly to things, it tears me apart to watch time pass by. But I'm realizing that though the passage of time is painful, it's also beautiful and necessary. It allows for growth and new love and hopefulness. It allows for change, something I was once so scared of but am now more ready to embrace. Welcoming change has been one of the greatest gifts this life has given me. It has also been one of the greatest challenges.
There are going to be very difficult moments for me in the process of this big change. I'm having one right now, as I'm adding to this entry later in the day. The absence of my team is sitting heavily in my chest. The way I miss them is indescribable. I keep hoping one of them will just walk through my door and tell me this was all a big joke, and we can go back to the way things were. They say you don't know what you have until it's gone, but I knew. I knew every second that what I found was golden. It will take me a while to move on from this, to feel as though anything I do can compare to this past year. But I know that things always get better. I know if it was possible to experience this much beauty, then ultimately anything is possible. The memories i have of this year will sit in my heart and bring me light when I'm in darkness, they will remind me that no matter where I go I am surrounded by a profound love that time can't touch. This is enough for me. This will have to be enough.