Dear Arizona,
Today I walked out of my tiny, safe closet home for the last time. It was both exciting and terrifying, meaning so many different things to me. I’m not really sure it’s actually hit me yet, my first year being totally over and my summer beginning.
This day was really stressful, on my ankle, my head, and my heart. My friend, Jesse, got me through it by helping me take the weight off of my ankle and my head (literal and metaphorical, respectively). After we moved my last bits of stuff, saved over as my “summer house”* items, he drove us downtown and we got some coffee and chatted about feminism**.
*Did I mention that I am definitely living at this sweet, beautiful lady house for the summer? Right next to the co-op with some sweet souls and a cat named Oliver (how Summer 2010 of me haha. Also, Oliver is temporary for the summer like I am so we are living-situation twins).
** I have been reading a lot about feminism (as true feminism for the greater good and not hating things and calling it something it isn’t) and sex positive attitudes (which isn’t just ~~have sex! but a lot of really important things to know about life and our culture.)
Now, I’m sitting in Café Vita and relaxing a bit. This year ended in a way I really didn’t expect, and I’m learning to live in a new way. It’s all okay, of course, and like I said before I am totally excited about the times that lie ahead of me and the people in my life. I’m excited to be out of the dorms, even though that room became my safe place. It became my home and I feel like a lot of really important mental, emotional, and spiritual changes and revelations happened inside of it. But, I am happy that I never have to listen to the same Kid Cudi song play boomingly-loud from the room above mine. I’m glad that I never have to hear the toilet run after someone flushes and forgets to fix it. I’m glad that- HOLY SHIT I JUST SAW SOMEONE ON A BIKE HOLDING ONTO THE BACK OF A TRUCK AND RIDING IT THAT WAY WHAT THE HOLY HELL THAT IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING WHAT. hahaha uh… anyway. I’m happy that I’ll live somewhere with a yard and a kitchen. And I’m exited for next year, finding a place to live and meeting new people and learning about musical theatre and its culture. But first, I am excited for summer.
I am exited to go home next week and see all of the people I have missed so much in the last (almost) six months. I’m excited to go swimming and pet my dogs and listen to my nephew baby-babble for the first time in person. I’m excited to see Caleb and Sarah and Emily and hang out with them and drink too much coffee. I’m not looking forward to the heat, but it will be nice to feel something so normal and deeply rooted in me. The heat is apart of my desert bones, and while I don’t plan to spend too much time directly in it, it will be nice to see some unforgiving sunshine for the first time since I left. It will be nice to go driving by myself with the windows up and my favorite mixed-cds in. It will be so nice to hug my whole family and walk barefoot on my living room carpet and eat dinner at the dinner-table.
I’m excited to come back to Olympia in early July and look for a job. I’m excited to tattoo as many people as I can and really work on that craft. I’m so excited to live in this house, this summer. I’m excited to get to know these ladies and live right next to the co-op. I’m excited to start jamming a lot more with my friend Scott. I’m excited to go to more summer shows and walk barefoot in the grass. I’m excited for my ankle to fully heal so I can go running again. I’m excited to explore more forests and go to Seattle and to look for a house come the fall. I’m excited to paint. I’m excited to get a Washington library card, so I can check out books on tarot reading and astrology and nature.
Life is changing again, even though I still remember last summer and the pre-move butterflies vividly. I can hardly imagine where I’ll be in a year from today, who I will have met and connected with, the things I will have experienced, the ways I’ll have grown; life is so real even though I never feel like I really get it. I would have never expected to have had the year I did, a year ago today. If you would have asked me, sitting at my little mall kiosk in my all-black uniform, I would have never said I expected to find an Olympia Family the first night I got here. I would have never expected to fall out of love after a night spent underneath the shelter of the trees. I would have never said I was going to write a book or connect with the moon or dance freely every Wednesday.
This year was life-changing, which may be cliché and dramatic. But it was. I couldn’t have asked for a better, more perfect year.
A girl filled with the world standing for the last time inside a room empty of all that makes it a home.
I’ll see you next week, AZ. Now, time to live out of my backpack and sleep on couches for a week. Meow.
xox e.
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