Terrified

You know those moments when you're on the brink of something new? Something huge and life changing? And you're caught between the old and the new, today and tomorrow, excitement and sheer bloody terror?

I'm right there.

I'm right there, and I'm terrified.

Humans are creatures of habit. We find our routine and we stick to it. It's comfortable. It's familiar. It's easy. My life is none of those things right now. And yet it's all of those things. It's midway between the familiar and the unknown, and the transition is definitely not comfortable.

I've done this a few times before. When I left for college. When I got my first boyfriend. When I blindly auditioned for a brass band that put me through the wringer and changed the course of my life. In all those times my world has shifted and rearranged itself and made me seriously consider what it was and who I was. I had to redefine myself and find room for both the old and the new--the things that made me who I was to that point, and the new things that were changing me, like it or not. And in all those times it was hard. It was hard to go from the high school girl living at home to the college girl who had to cook all her own meals and set her own schedule. It was hard to go to a new place and become a missionary and adjust to different rules. It was very hard to set aside twenty years of single-ness and re-conceptualize myself as a girl with a boyfriend.

But I managed it. In all cases I worked through it and cobbled together a new me that learned to survive and thrive and conquer that new sphere.

Now I find myself at a new transition. In mid-leap. The apex of that leap is arriving in eight short days. Then I have to rearrange the pieces of my life into a new pattern--one that works with another person's life. And although I was more than ready to quit the sphere of college apartment living, the habits and conditioning of five full years are proving hard to alter. It's been a long time since those last big changes. And none of them, honestly, were quite this big. Not this life-changing. Not this important. Not this profound.

It's a good thing I'll have my best friend along with me to conquer this world. To define it, and me, and us. Wish us luck as we begin our next great adventure.