Home again....

So I'm home again and I feel like it. I feel like I am welcomed and embraced and in the place where I most enjoy being. I feel, much as I always do, that this place is more home than any I have know. I can't express fully how amazing it is to be so thoroughly welcomed by the friends that I love so very much. It feels amazing to be near my grandparents and our family.

I am so excited that this time has come, and am already fearing the day that I have to go back. Every fiber of who I am belongs here. And I won't lie, I wish that my family, that is to say, my mother, sister and step-dad, would move back here. I feel like two people between here and there, and I like this one better.

This is the first Christmas without Dave, it is the first time I have faced the notion that we will never have one of those perfect Christmas moments. He will always be a memory now. And let me just say, I don't really have any great Christmas memories with him. I have a few Christmas memories with his family, but they are not warm. Mostly, they make me sad. A bit lost even.

Part of me wonders if I will ever really be able to reconcile the loss of that ideal that I wished for for so long. I wonder if there will ever be a time that I can just say, it was all it could be, and simply accept that. Something tells me no.... but then again you never know what your heart will let you do. Maybe I will surprise myself.

Two of my friends are expecting a beautiful new edition to their family. I am so excited for them, and to have the chance to see a family come into being. I have never really seen the beginning from so close before. I am excited to see who this new person will become and how my friends will take on this new experience with her.

I went to a funeral earlier this week. A funeral for someone much too young. It makes me sad, but it is also a reminder for me that nothing stops, ever. Not life, not death, not the world. Nothing. Life has become routine, but even the smallest of choices means a new path and I have neglected that for some time now. Take with you, always, my love and the heart that I would openly share. Please always remember that you are with me, you are part of who I have become and what I will pass on to those in my life.

This has been a year of endings... and beginnings. Each event, each change has played into building a year I will certainly not allow myself to forget.

Happy Christmas...

and merry future... whatever it holds.