Tuesday, February 1, 2011

My Friend Surrealism

Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow night my in-laws will be flying down to help me pack the trailer and clean the house. Thursday, Mustache Man will pick up the trailer. Friday, we will leave this life behind, taking with our household goods only lessons learned and memories.

It doesn't feel real yet. The packing is tangible enough, but it's as though I'm waiting for the big "F-U" from the Marine Corps. The big haha, jokes-on-you. I'm waiting to have everything packed up, everything loaded into the trailer, about to turn onto 1-5 North just for Mustache Man to get a phone call telling him that we can't actually leave yet.

It's an awful feeling.

I don't think any of it will feel like reality until we unpack that trailer and start settling into our new home. My mother in law has been a saint, and for the last week or two has been dilligently painting the house and having new carpet installed into the kids' bedrooms. It's going to be cold and rainy, I'm personally hoping it snows right after we get the trailer returned. We will be going back to a place where the road names are almost all English names and words, and where I track pine needles and dirt into the house and car.

I wonder if we'll have a hard time fitting into the house. It's not really smaller, just different. Different is good. We've been so numb to life for the last few years. The weather in California is almost always sunny and rarely cold. The road names in every city seem the same. I'm tired of feeling "happy" when I'm around more white people than Hispanic because I can understand everything everyone is saying. I'm tired of not having anywhere decent to go hiking or camping or fishing. Different will be very good.

Most of all, I wonder how long it will take me to get back to "normal". How long until I'm more happy and not angry or frustrated all the time? How long until I can fall asleep at night without a sleep aid? How long untl I don't have headaches anymore? How long until I don't feel like we're on vacation? We've been looking forward to this day for the last few years. We keep saying "once this is over, things will get better" but I'm starting to wonder if that's true. We've been surviving one day at a time, always dragging ourselves towards tomorrow and one day closer to the end. Now that the end is here, what's next?

Mustache Man and I have both applied to Washington State University's Online Degree Program. We are eager to start school, but there's that possibility that we may be rejected. That scares the heck out of me. WSU is the only college I've ever really, REALLY wanted to go to. What if they don't accept me? I'll be crushed. Mustache Man has a job waiting for him when we get home, and I'll start looking as soon as we are up there so I can interview ASAP. Other than these "hopes", our future is unknown.

I kind of like that.

I probably won't blog much over the next few days, but I'll be back with updates and pictures when we've unpacked the trailer.

See you on the other side.

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