Falling Back Screaming...

Tomorrow night, at sundown.

I can't believe it's almost here.  The other end of this beginning.  It's almost staggering, really.  It's very difficult to concentrate on anything else.  And every hour seems to crawl slower and slower, the closer I get to the finish line.

I wish I was happier about it all.  I thought I would be.  I always thought this would be a joyous moment of celebration and triumph.  But I don't feel any of that.  I'm just anxious and worried.  I don't know what about, exactly.  Just fear of the unknown, I guess.  And I'm kinda pissed off, too.  But that's unrelated.  Just getting in the way, and making everything just that much more confusing and difficult.

And disappointed, too.  Because I was looking forward to this so much, and I worked so hard to get here, and it just seems really unfair for me to not be enjoying it now.  I feel like I earned this, bought it with pain and sacrifice, but now in the end I'm not getting my reward.  Just seems wrong.  Fucking cosmic gyp.

But I think I'm looking at it the wrong way.  I've been so obsessed with this moment over the last few weeks, that I've lost my focus.  It's not about this moment.  It was never about this moment.  When I decided to do this one year ago, it wasn't so that I could feel happy when it was all over.  It was about the experience of the past year.  It was about learning, and growing, and earning another opportunity to shape myself to the form that I want.  This moment was inevitable, but it wasn't the point.

I don't need to enjoy this.  Any more than I needed to enjoy the past year.  I just need to do it.

And maybe that's all this is, really:  natural grief over the end of something important to me, something I've spent a significant period of my life focused on, and working toward.  Every ending is also a new beginning of something else.  And grief is a natural response to an ending.  And since I don't know what to expect from this new beginning, there's little joy or excitement about what-comes-next to temper that grief.  And so I just end up feeling sad and anxious, when it seems like I should feel proud and elated.

And the bitter irony of it all is, all this just leaves me feeling like I could really use a drink.