Last few days

Sunday, rainy, chilly, the kind of day when maybe you wouldn’t mind leaving Portland. Ben was out, I sat on the couch most of the day doing homework. Trying to get a little ahead of things so the rest of the week wouldn’t be too busy. Unsuccessful.

Monday, class, home, homework, last counseling visit, dinner with Jess and Jered. The weather changed back to Portland summer. I began to feel anxious.

Tuesday, class, lunch with Barbara. Later, walking home from Emily’s, feeling miserable. That was the start of it, I think. I cried when I got home, sitting on the couch, and felt myself falling over an edge. I’m sitting on the couch right now, surrounded by our bags and last-minute remembered things, and still have that sense of falling.

Wednesday, class, drive to Corvallis, while away half an hour in Amy’s hammock waiting for dinner. Driving away from her house, the evening sun turning the grass fields gold and dusty, I cried again. Twilight is like a tiny autumn every day, the way it makes all your endings seem so dramatic. The clouds turned pink, then purple, then gray.

Thursday, today, class, then lunch with Brett. What a strange thing, to meet someone for the first time on your last day. Walked over the Burnside bridge, kept turning around to see the city one more time, funny how it’s so easy to fall in love with the things you’re leaving, I never cared that much about the skyline before. Back home, anxious puttering, last-minute things in last-minute bags. I call for the cab.

Later now, at the airport. I cried, trying not to make any noise, all the way here. Now it’s all sort of dissociated and unreal. I spent the last two hours at home noticing this strange phenomenon where each half-hour or so I would look back with this intense nostalgia on the thing that had happened in the last half-hour. Upon arriving home: “Wasn’t it beautiful to walk over the bridge one more time,” and a little later, feeling too sad about saying goodbye to Michelle and Aaron. Just before we leave, a moments-ago-formed memory of sitting on the patio talking to Harriet on the phone, seems so sweet in retrospect, I didn’t know retrospect only took 20 minutes to acquire.

There’s not much more to say yet. I’m sad.