Moving On

Last night I said goodbye to my closest friend. Sometime today her plane will be landing in Chicago. We have known each other practically our entire lives and been best friends since, I think, the first day we met. It's sad for me to think that I don't know when I'll see her again but mostly I feel hopeful, possibly for the first time in my life. I am so happy for her! She and I have both been wanting to get out of West Virginia for as long as I can remember. Now we both finally are. Sure, there is a chance that it won't work out for either of us, but I think it will. It has to.

I don't know if I am really the kind of person who believes in "signs" or whatever you want to call them, but it does seem like things have just sort of fallen together recently. I was accepted for the internship at Farm Sanctuary on my birthday and my friend was offered an amazing deal on an apartment in Chicago on Christmas day. I think it's safe to say that this year we each got the greatest present we could have hoped for. She left today and I am leaving exactly one week from now.

Next week I will be saying goodbye to everyone else. I will be leaving for New York next Saturday and, as pathetic as it is at twenty four years old, it will be the first time I will be away from my family for any length of time. Even during my brief stint in college I was living in Morgantown, only an hour away, and I came home almost every weekend. Sometimes my sister would even come and stay with me at my dorm. I truly hope that this internship somehow leads to a new life but, if it does, it will be hard to walk away form people who have always been so important to me.

It is true that my internship at Farm Sanctuary will only last for three months. So It's not exactly my ticket out of  West Virginia for good but I keep telling myself that once I take this initial step the rest will be easy. For the first time in my life I will be doing something that truly matters to me, something I can really feel good about, something that makes me believe that my life is worthwhile. I can only hope that after this experience I will know what I really want and not be willing to come back here and settle for the life I've had so far.

There are many people here who I care for very much and there are some very good things about this place, but I just don't belong here and I have known that for a long, long time. My goal is to not have to move back to West Virginia after my internship. Either I will love Watkins Glen and decide to stay there or I will just pick a new place and go. Anyone who knows me very well knows that I tend to come up with ideas like this all the time, and so far none of them have worked out. I suddenly decide "Oh, I'm going to go here!" or " I know, I'll do this!" and then later I realize that the idea was ridiculous and I just end up feeling like an idiot. There is a good chance that this one will be no different from any of the others.

The only thing that might make this one different is that this is the first time I have actually taken any sort of step to get where I want to be. I have signed up for this internship. I have paid my deposit. I have packed (at least some of) my stuff. The internship is going to happen. I can only hope that after it's finished I will know what to do next, and be brave enough to do it.


Rachel- Thank you for being such an amazing friend and good luck with your wonderful new life in Chicago!