real

This is going to sound really weird coming from me...But I don't know if I'm ready to graduate. I know, I'm the girl who makes daily announcements about how many days, hours, seconds there are until graduation, and have since day one. I have let my whole life depend on June 13, 2009 and have been impatiently waiting its impending arrival.

Today marks exactly 5 months until graduation...and all of a sudden the realization is hitting me. With graduation comes the real world. No more spring breaks, no more time off to study, no more financial aid to pad the lack of income...With it comes a real come in a new place and me becoming the new guy all over again, trying to learn new names, faces, policies and procedures, clients. I move to a new city, not just a new one but a huge one, I find my own around on my own, I get lost in new places, I learn new rules. I make new friends, new aquaintances, I tell my story, I introduce myself, all over again. I start fresh. It's good, it's bad, it's new, it's scary, it's exciting. I'm nervous.

There are two things making this the hardest:

1) New friends
2) My job

1) I have recently become really really good friends with some girls at school and I love them to death. This alway seems to happen to me, I find my closest friends right when we are nearing the end of our time together. I also have my best friend here, my roommate, who has been my friend since the beginning. Thankfully she'll be near Seattle too so we won't be far apart. But, we'll have both started our new lives, separate from one another. We won't come home to each other anymore, share meals in our kitchen, find a way to fill a huge 4 bedroom house with just the two of us or be able to see one another just by walking up or downstairs. That's a lot to let go of.

2) The biggie is really my job. I absolutely love working at and for SNAP and have met some wonderful people here. I love my clients, I love what SNAP does in the community and what it stands for, I love the people I work with and for, I even love my office with poop stains on the ceiling, lack of heat and broken file cabinets...I don't want to leave. And nearly every day someone says something like, "What are we going to do with you?" "We sure will miss you." "We'll make you stay." "You're not allowed to leave." These comments are so thoughtful and endearing but they just make it harder for me to know I have to say goodbye. I am hopeful I will find another place in Seattle that even comes close to comparing to SNAP but I am so nervous about the possibility of it not happening. I'm scared I'll have to settle for something else and I'll be disappointed knowing what I could have. I've been offered my current job and other jobs at SNAP and even today was told by a manager at SNAP that she'd be happy to find another position for me here.

I hate being the new person. I was welcomed with open arms into SNAP but it took a while to get settled and comfortable, as it does with any new position. When I got to that point I got so comfortable. I'm so at home at SNAP. I LOVE going to work everyday, I never dread it. Rarely will you hear me say, "I don't want to go to work" and if I do it's usually because I just want to get to Bellevue to see Nathan sooner. I have loved other jobs in the past so I know it's possible for it to happen again in my life...I just hope it can be now or I am going to have a hard time adjusting to my new life.

I am beyond excited to live with Nathan. Being with him trumps everything. I will love living with him and being with him whenever I want and being with new friends. But I don't want to wake up and dread 8 hours of work until I get back home with Nathan...and then dread weekends until I finally make some girl friends of my own. That part makes me nervous.

When my cousin graduated a few years ago, she was getting ready to do the same thing, pick up and move to Seattle and live with her boyfriend. I remember her crying through almost her entire graduation party. Now I know why. She was beyond nervous and had gotten comfortable in our home in Bozeman.

I know it's going to be good and it's going to be what I've been waiting years for...I'm so excited. I'm just getting nervous as reality sets in.