Now You Know

I can't wait to move back to Starkville. Everybody knows how excited I am, and I've been telling every person I see about it since April. I've bought all my furniture; I've ordered my new computer; I've packed lots of boxes and painted several pieces of furniture. I am SO excited.
But sometimes...
I get sad. There... I said it. There's a tiny (miniscule, barely counts for anything) part of me that knows how terrible it will be the day I load up that last box and drive out of my driveway. Every once in a while I think about it, and I have to force myself to think about something else. It hurts too much.
"Come on, quit being such a baby! You're only moving twenty-five miles away," you say. And you're absolutely right. But when you've been through as much with a person as I've been through with my mom, twenty-five miles sometimes feels like twenty-five hundred miles. It's unbelievably difficult to explain and impossible to avoid. It's not something I believe I will ever grow out of; I'm not even sure that I want to.
For all of her incessant nagging and millions of phone calls; for all of her "why don't you try it this way"s and her lists of things for me to take care of, there's also her cards for no reason and her "surprises" when she knows I need them; there's her unwavering support and her boundless understanding.
So, sure... I'm ecstatic to move into this new phase. Of course I am. But I would be lying if I said that there wasn't a particle of me that wished I could stay here forever.