7.8

The thought of Americorps ending in less than two weeks makes my stomach sink to the ground. Ten months. Ten months of endless inconsistency, moving a billion times, eating food off the floor and wearing the same clothes seven days in a row. My standards have been significantly lowered, for sure, but my expectations have been exceeded beyond my wildest dreams. It may seem unbelievable to compare this program to a dream, after the bed bugs and moldy walls and baling cardboard for 8 hours straight and some *very* difficult people. But I've discovered that if you do the most mundane tasks in the world with people you love, they can easily transform into bliss. And I learned that any difficult person that makes you feel tiny and worthless can be buffered by someone who sees the entire world in you. I've been so lucky this year to find people who see that in me. I see a world of love around me everyday, my life is painted with gratitude where a little more cynicism used to be.

As my time here is approaching its end, i can feel my temmates becoming impatient, anxious to move on to the next adventure in life. How I want to grab them and shake them and tell them that one day they will miss this so dearly. Maybe this is because i know I will miss this so dearly and i can't bear the thought of wishing any of it away.

We're still living at St. Dorothy's, where everything is an exuberant green and the way the light hits the landscape brings me to tears sometimes. 

We just finished up our last day at the food bank yesterday, and Mark (our supervisor) had a little ceremony for us in the lobby where he gave us baseball caps and gift cards and everyone thanked us for our help over the past few months. Now, we'll be working with Habitat and St. Dorothy's for the rest of the round. By "the rest of the round," I mean we only have one week left in Santa Rosa. I'm in extreme denial. I'm excited to go home and see everyone I love there, but I don't know how to let this chapter of my life end. I don't know how to let go of midnight kisses and the green of the river and laughing hysterically all the time about complete nonsense. I don't know how to let go of 10 months with 12 people, people who finish your sentences and who you can say absolutely anything to without holding back. I don't know how to let go of people you love with your whole heart but who will all go back to their lives, hundreds of miles away from you.  I don't know how to let go of Geraldine, our big green priceless van that's completely falling apart, or watching the seals peek their shiny black heads out on the edge of the pacific ocean at sunset. All the little moments of divinity so easily slip by. In a perfect world, I could keep all of them in a little jar to revisit whenever i feel lonesome again or wonder if this whole thing ever really happened. But it is the real world, where moments come and go and don't care if you remember them or not. There are so many small beautiful things I can't account for in writing, because I am too busy living them or because I forget how important they are. Like Jon telling me he loves me every single day, or laughing with Alexis about the "chocolate" mud at Habitat for Humanity or doing improv with Grant or singing along to Lips of an Angel while we shoveled piles of dirt. I'm always making lists, I know, because that's what makes sense to me and that's how I remember things sometimes. I make these mental lists of happy little things,  praying my brain can file them away for later. When these two weeks are over, and i go back to whatever the real world holds for me, all the moments here will just become memories. And the memories will have to be enough.