Leaving. Going.

 
Photo credit: Susan King, 2011



It's so real.  The physical pain you feel the first time you leave them.  I wasn't prepared for that.

I searched long and hard for someone to care for them.  Did diligent research on the subject.  How could I entrust them to just anyone?  I couldn't.

But I had decided that they could not come along with me on this journey.  I made all the preparations to leave them behind.  Made the lists.  Told some all the right people what I was planning.  Said goodbye as I walked away.

Funny how I didn't miss them.  For awhile.  I felt an odd freedom.  Lifted.  Like myself, but not myself.  A new self.  A fragile self.  How would it be without them?  What would I be like now?

It turns out that I never did get an answer to my question...

They followed me here.  My weaknesses.  They followed me because I simply tried to leave them behind and did not understand that they'd be with me wherever I went.  I thought it was my fault that they followed me here because I kept looking back to see if they were still there.  It was.  I did.  They were.  I was moving too slowly in my new direction and they were chasing me.

It was so real.  The physical pain I felt when they finally caught up to me.  I was terrified.  I shouldn't have been.  They didn't want to hurt me.  They just had some things they needed to tell me.

I needed to know that they would cripple me, wear me down, unless I figured out how to deal with them.  I would have to be stronger in the right places to compensate.  I needed to understand that if I tried to move out ahead of them again, and leave them in the dust, that they would keep stepping on my heels.  I would have to let them be next to me in order to walk as easily as I planned.  I needed to accept that they were weaknesses.  Not failures.  Or catastrophes.  Or defeats.

It does get easier.  The leaving.  The going.