It Has Begun

Between 24-48 hours ago, It began. "It" may hereafter be defined for this post as "the total loss and control of emotions, specifically that of tears." It is, in a word, rough. I have taken extra precautions. I am beginning to let people know this will happen sporadically and I will be unable to do anything about It. I have stopped wearing mascara on my bottom lashes and may stop wearing it altogether, depending on how the next 48 hours of diagnostic testing go. It connects to very little logic other than what is going on in my head and heart, which if you can figure the logic out of those two, you get a prize. It happens when I realize I'm doing something for the last time--like swimming with Moulin participants, enjoying a firework spectacle with the Prevotes, encouraging again the JAO leadership transition team, getting with students for what may very well be final goodbyes, bike rides to places that in a couple weeks time will no longer be in the my life, eating betterave rouge (red beet) salad that I once detested but I now long for, going to dinners in L'Arche foyers, etc, etc. It happens most pointedly when I'm all alone, sitting on my favorite church garden bench to savor my holy space or washing my face in the bathroom. Without warning, as It's definition suggests, I am all apart.

I've had visions too of chaining myself to something grounded and inanimate and pitching an "I don't wanna fit," which I rarely did as a child but now the moment appropriately seems to call for it, to protest my departure. People keep bringing up what date it is, and this does not help. At all.

Yes, yes, as I go, I am doing so in peace. But that doesn't mean every now and then I can't just be a human and grieve and lose it and pitch a fit. I just hope they can drag me out of the car July 8. We have no idea how that day will go.