bendy: The road goes ever on and on...

...down from the door where it began

I think moving from Los Angeles to Seattle was the most emotionally draining and logistically daunting thing I've ever had to do in my life thus far. And although I say Los Angeles, most people know I actually mean Torrance, California, city of my childhood, playground of my youth, and the house that I grew up in.

I prepared for a full year, even so much that I went through and quit my old job and got a new job in order to make more money and gain experience that would allow me to start my career in a better place in the new city. I put everyone through what Emily termed "the Longest Goodbye Ever" and exploited my imminent departure as a way to get anything from free meals, to wild adventures in the city, to my choice of songs in Rock Band. And I almost got a lap dance.

But with all that preparation, I still found myself overwhelmed when the time came. The actual physical move went better than I had anticipated and cost less than I had budgeted. But I was not emotionally braced for the reality of leaving everyone and everything I know behind and running off into the great unknown. It was a strange thing to hug my family and friends goodbye and then get onto a freeway that I had driven on every day, and somehow end up in a different life. It was very Lord of the Rings-ie:

[Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

So yeah. The first night in the hotel in Redding I cried at the sight of the marshmallow roses my mom had given us, at the snowglobe Jean made me, at every little thing. A lot of the time I wondered to myself if I was making a huge mistake. Most of the time I just tried to allow my mind to float in space and not feel, because feeling was painful. And it was easy to do this because the landscape was beautiful: snowcapped mountains, silvery lakes, and a lot of roadside adult stores in Oregon for some reason. It was a nice drive, but it hurt like hell. Even at this moment it's just easier for me not to think about it. Talking through it a few days later with Andy, it seemed like a dream, and I think for a long time, the journey between point A & B, or rather CA & WA, will remain a numb blur.

I do remember we had a lot of coffee and beef jerky.

And now I am here, in Seattle! It is an exciting new place, and I think if I had to choose a city to start a grand new adventure I could not have found a better place than Seattle. Or a better navigator/tent buddy/Samwise than Andyroo. He's the cheese to my macaroni, as the saying goes. I miss my friends and my family, but in that I am fortunate also, for they have all been enthusiastic and supportive and they all know that I will still be there for them, just a phone call or text message away.

Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.