the wating IS the hardest part

My bags are packed...and now I'm ready for the long night of anxious waiting for the alarm to go off at 5am, and the drive to the airport. I was eating an ice cream and wandering around the Los Osos rite aide thinking in about 30 hours I will be in Amsterdam, how crazy. I can't picture myself outside this foggy town I have lived in all my life. I try to get stoked and think of all the spectacular new things I am about to see and do, but I can't because I have never known myself outside of here, so all I see is black. I told my dad it felt like jumping off a cliff, and then I burst in to tears because it is true. I have no idea what will happen, and that is good, I need to loosen my grip on things, say the eternal yes to life. But I'm scared. I know I will get there and laugh at myself now, sitting here stomach all tied in knots and cotton mouthed. All the strange things I am going to miss...like sleeping in my bed under the quilt my mom made me, my beloved friends, watering my house plants, shitting in my own toilet, dinner with the roommates, playing with the baby. A fair enough trade for all that Europe has to offer me I am sure. The new smells and new people, and the old buildings, and the coffee that will make me want to cry its so good, all the pictures I will draw to keep myself company and remind me later how beautiful everything is. I will come home and everything will be waiting for me, the mess in my apartment, my toilet, my gorgeous friends, but for now I am missing it already and I can't seem to say goodbye to any of it enough.