It’s finally hitting me that I’m leaving. Leaving anywhere for me is always sad regardless of where I’m headed. I moved around so much as a kid that I feel acutely aware of how relationships can get dropped when space suddenly intervenes, how experiences warp and names fade and memories start revolving around photographs or stories you’ve told a thousand times. I’m one of those people who acknowledges “this is the last time I’ll get to see the moon above the palm trees in my garden” and “this is the last time I’ll drink Tembo beer with the journalists”—the future of me leaving started following me around when it got dark out this evening, even though I have another 23 hours.

I have this memory of me when I was nine or so, going from my dad’s house to my mom’s, and in the car remembering I’d forgotten my pajamas at his house. That fact was a breaking point and I remembering sobbing “I forgotttt them, what will I dooo?” with utmost desperation. Even now whenever I’m in a car on the way to an airport and someone asks me if I have my ticket and passport my heart leaps with the thought of PAJAMAS!!!, even though I don’t really own any.

So tomorrow I will fly 10,000 miles over 36 hours through Brussels and New Jersey to San Francisco. I know that as soon as I get on that air conditioned plane in the dark and they spray the required pesticides throughout the cabin and offer me tea and I’m drugged on cold medicine leaving won’t hurt as badly, that I’ll be traveling forward, to the life I hacked out for myself 10 months ago in a town where nobody knew me. But tonight is just empty shelves and rooms and packed bags and this amazing oblivious kitten on my lap and Keba peeking through the window in the front door wanting me to throw her ball. And I feel a bit sad.