leaving this place...

I think I'm in denial. I'm leaving my home. This is the place I've been most comfortable for 4 years. Not this apartment, but this city. Its energy and emotion and pace. I've grown wiser and older. Sort of. I don't even know if I have. I still feel like I'm making the same mistakes, just with a bigger voice telling me, "Come on, dude. You should know better." But I'm not too worried about it. I have a feeling that this feeling is permanent.

So this place. This beautiful, friendly, loving, musical, artistic, inspiring, cold, little big city. I adore it. I leave it with a heart full of it's memories and lessons. The people here are just so fucking real. So real and flawed and beautiful. It's really hard to leave them. I've had so much fun in this place. I've worked really hard in this place. And the people with whom I've shared the fun and the work will change me forever.

What makes me feel optimistic about this loss is usual. She's always the one that makes me feel optimistic. My best friend, Alise. She knows me. Like really knows me. I don't think anyone will ever know me as well as her. I feel so lucky that someone so wonderful loves me in spite of myself. I also feel lucky that I know we will end up together again one day. Driving up and down the Pacific Coastal Highway to see one another. We'll drink cheap wine on one of our beaches and talk about our achievements and failures and loves and lusts like we always do. We will disagree and see every situation from opposite sides and meet in the middle. The middle that I like to call reality, because we are both completely insane in this wonderfully complementary way. I'm in love with our friendship. It keeps me me.

So now, I'm down to my final days in this place. Leaving all these beautiful, flawed people behind. Heading back to the beautiful, flawed people I left behind 4 years ago. I'm waiting for all of this to sink in. God help me when it does.