28082011

So it begins.


A month left. A month. The impeccable feeling of departure and adventure is already looming in the air. The final preparations have began and I think it's somehow hard to show how excited I am. I'm not sure whether I, myself, know how excited I am because this does feel real. I can imagine myself being ready with packing my new bagpack and taking a picture of myself and my travel companion smiling next to me in the photo. I can imagine us stepping onto the train departing from my home town. I can imagine the empty feeling. The feeling that you're not quite sure of what to expect - whether you're even allowed to expect anything.

Now that I'm sitting on the couch of my parent's place, I felt for the first time that time is running short. Even though the month's workload feels like a thorn under my foot, the one month left is nothing but a scratch on a chalkboard. A whiteline barely visible in the timeline of my wait. The wait has lasted for years.

I think I have also said my first goodbyes. And apparently I'm still not good at them. Is anyone really? They haven't felt like goodbyes, they've been more like see-you-soons. But as my father told me yesterday in the sauna, a year in the lives of the people who remain here, is nothing. Their time passes fast and they will have barely noticed that I was gone in the first place. Whereas my own year will feel like the most important year of them all. And it could be. It really could be.

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.” - J.R.R. Tolkien


(how I simply adore Tolkien's words)