Saying Goodbye

So it’s been a rather hectic week for me. Who would have thought that 2 weeks would be enough to get your entire life together, say goodbye to everyone and everything that you are familiar with, and make the biggest transition of your life? Well, I’m telling you now that it isn’t.

In between the time that I had last posted here and now: I have received my official acceptance to Western, which revealed that I would be a bit better off monetarily than I had originally thought; I have found a mover after a great deal of figurative nail-biting; I have done a significant amount of packing (although I still have a significant amount to go); and I have spent some time (but not enough time) with people I will not be seeing for a while. A mover will be picking my stuff up Friday evening and delivering it in London the next day in the afternoon, which means I will be leaving for London Saturday by 5 am. I will have a weekend in my new apartment before I head off for Alberta for the summer.

I spent time with many different people this week. At Vanier, where I worked for 6 years of my life, they had a nice little send-off for me. I spent an evening with Brandon and Sarah, whom I may only be able to see when our paths cross on our separate visits to Montreal. I spent an afternoon wandering in Centennial Park with Marleigh and Heidi and their beautiful baby, Kaelyn (see link to Marleigh’s pictures in my pictures on the right). I had my own little going away party with a Harry Potter food theme, complete with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, Hogwarts, dragon eggs, and chocolate frogs (see the first pictures I took with the awesome camera my awesome friends got me of this event also in my pictures on the right). I spent an afternoon with my dad and had dinner with my stepmom and stepsister. My stepsister is going to Australia for good in September, so I hope that this wasn’t the last time that I see her.

Even though it may not be apparent to those around me, saying goodbye has been really difficult for me, and I have had a lump in my throat all week as I suppress my need to start weeping publicly. I have to keep telling myself that this isn’t really goodbye, and that I will be back regularly, and it’s not like I’ll never see these people again.

But in many ways this is goodbye. Although it may not be goodbye to the people around me, it is still goodbye to my life as I know it now. After I leave this house on Friday (I will most likely not be staying here for my last night, as I will no longer have a bed), I will never enter it (at least as my house) again. There will no longer be a cat to sleep at the end of my bed (I hope Bucky remembers me and doesn’t hate me when I come back to visit). Even visits to the people I will come back to see will have to follow a very set schedule, as there is only so much I can do in one weekend. Until I come back here after my degree, there will be no place on the island of Montreal I can call home.

This is not to say that I am not looking forward to the new changes in my life. I am very excited to spend some time out in the field in Alberta, and I am looking forward to living on my own and being a grad student. But it still saddens me that I have so little time in which to prepare for this huge transition and to say goodbye properly to everyone and to everything around me.

Edit: I've decided to embed this in my blog just because I want to share with you my excitement for this movie. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix arrives in theatres July 13.