Away

After several hard and rather unfun months in Denver and after a couple weeks of non-stop parents who blame everything their child does on everything but themselves and the child (not all my parents—some are pretty great), I am leaving for the pure enjoyment of leaving. I’ve been excited for a trip before, and I’ve been more excited about other trips. However, I don’t think I have physically and mentally ever needed one more in my life. It feels as if I have been swimming up from the depths of the ocean and I can see the surface just a few feet away, as if I will finally be able to take in renewing air before plunging back to the deep awhile longer.
My friend is a flight attendant for Frontier, and he can add several friends a year to his friends plan. I get to be one of the lucky ones for the next three-hundred sixty-five days. I can go anywhere in the US that Frontier goes, as many times as I like, for fifty bucks round trip. My first reaction was, “Great, thanks for this on the year I have the least money.” I probably would have gone somewhere every other week. In reality, there has never been a year I needed a way to escape more, and I am so thankful to be given the means to do so once in awhile.
So, I am off to Seattle. A place that I have only been once, but holds some of the best memories of my life (at least in one fashion). AA, there will never been another month like the one we had, and I hold it as dear now as I did when we were living it (I miss you).
It’s silly how guilty I feel for leaving my puppies, but luckily my family is wonderful and is planning many visiting trips to my house randomly during the brief days I am gone.
I am off to be away from here. Away from things I still love. Things I can’t have. Things that no longer love me. Away from being the one in charge every minute of the day and trying (and often failing) to know how to change my kids’ lives when I can’t affect where they live. Away from everything. Away from who I have become this year. Away from it all. Towards a city of beauty. Towards wonderful memories and building new ones. Toward simply breathing. Simply seeing. Simply living.