Bye, friend

Last night Mark and I went to dinner with new friends, our mentor couple.  It was great to catch up with them, they are awesome, awesome people.  It was really nice to see them again and be able to talk to them as a married couple! :)  AND we've made it 6 months!  Can't wait til 6 years and 60 yearsssssss!!!

After dinner we headed to the bar to say goodbye to an old friend :( Alan will be leaving Richmond to go work at Wake Forest in NC.  It's really sad to see him leave Richmond... even though we didn't see him as much as we should have while he was here.

Last night when I was giving him a hug good bye, I found myself being a little nostalgic.  So, forgive me for this quick tangent.  When I graduated holy crap four years ago, I had a really hard time.  I remember listening to "I Feel Home" by O.A.R. 293423949857 times driving up 81 back to Manassas and out of Radford... before I left, like a true English teacher, I wrote a little something.  Just saying bye to Alan made me trudge up those feelings again.  Growing up is weird.  It was weird four years ago when I graduated from college, it's weird now.  So, here's what I wrote four years ago as I set off to embark on "real life"...

What’s going to happen to us next year?  We will all go our separate ways... will we ever see each other again?  What will happen to the friends we see every day?  What of the ones we see less often but love just as much?  Life is a train moving full force down the tracks and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what is passing by; it makes us sick to see what is, or isn’t coming up ahead.  Will you remember everyone you've met?  Will you remember all the good times you have had?

When we were kids we couldn't wait to grow up.  We wanted to be fairy princesses and firefighters, and it was so much easier to predict what was going to happen because we were so naïve.  Now that the naïveté has dwindled, we see that life is not so simple; decisions - hard decisions - have to be made, and sometimes it is impossible to discern what the right choice is.  I think that every person who crosses our paths affect us in ways we can’t understand and I want to say from the bottom of my heart, to all of the people who have been my friends, my confidants, my rocks, and to the people who have broken me down, and made me cry, thank you.

Love you, Al Pal!!  We'll miss you :)