Goodbyes

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.  It was amazing walks, conversation, and dinner with Mishka all over Wellington yesterday, but it was also the goodbyes this morning that have made today the hardest and most troubling day I have encountered so far.

This has been a disaster, the worst mistake of the last four weeks.  We never should have started anything up, or met up in Picton, and I never should have come back to Wellington yesterday.  I should have been so much smarter than to start something that I knew I couldn't finish, but I wasn't, and now I'm going to have to pay for those mistakes for a long time to come as I try to forget a girl I had no business knowing in the first place.

Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again.

It felt so good to be with someone, but more than that, it felt so good to be with someone as great and as warm as Michelle.  She's the kind of girl I would have loved to have met back home, but I haven't, and thinking of what it was like to be together for that short time and to know that I'm facing so long without that again is incredibly tough right now.  For today at least, this Watson fellowship feels much less like an award and much more like a sentence.  For fifty-two weeks I'm condemned to travel the earth alone, knowing that the brief moments of wonderful companionship I encounter along the way are fleeting at best.  There are always fifteen-minute friends on ferries, in hostel lounges, and at bars and restaurants, but to have to leave someone like Mishka, with whom I had connected so well, is infinitely harder.

I drove out of Wellington this morning and headed north and east for as long as I could, all by myself.  This, like everything else in the Watson fellowship, is something I have to struggle through on my own.  Just like no one can help me with my bags, or keep track of my flights, or take over at the wheel if I'm tired, no one can help me get through this.  Suddenly I feel exactly how far away I am from everyone and everything at home, and I feel even further away from the girl I left behind in Wellington.

Before I dropped Mishka off at class and drove away for good, we toyed with the idea of her visiting me in Perth in a little bit.  Just the idea makes me happy, but it seemed to both of us to be a longshot at best.  It's like the Billy Joel quote, "You know that when the truth is told, you can get what you want or you can just get old..."  I want so much to get to see Michelle again, in Wellington, in Perth, wherever.  The truth is that this is probably goodbye forever, and I feel older and more weary than I think I have in a long time.