I’ll miss you.

I’ve been absent.  Don’t hate me.

Senior week has thrown me for a loop.  A loop of lots of fun, an odd schedule, and an inability to ever remember what day it actually is.  Monday, right?  Right.

As graduation looms less than one week away, I fear I’m becoming more sad than anything.  I’m trying to squeeze everything in before that day comes, but I know I’m missing things.  And as soon as I move, I’ll miss people.

I’ve been seeing friends nearly every day of the past week and a half.  As we depart at the end of the nights, I’ve gotten into the habit of saying, in a funny way, “I’ll miss you,” knowing that the chances of me seeing them within the next twenty-four hours are pretty good.  It’s my version of a sentimental silly joke.  But soon it will be reality.

I said another goodbye today.  I drove to Stillwater for lunch with Denise, my BFF from my Trinity days.  Denise is one of my Stillwater ‘moms,’ a former coworker who calls me “Linnie” and spoils me with lunch and awesome cookie pans at my birthday.  Here we are, full of sweat and concrete dust as we put roofs on houses with 90 Trinity youth in Mexico in 2008, the trip when we became official BFFs:

We went out to The Green Room in downtown Stillwater to catch up and talk about what’s next for both of us.  Denise is moving to southern IL in a matter of months to join her husband who recently moved there for work.  It’s her last week at Trinity, but I hope not our last chance to see each other.  With her moving to southern IL and me moving to who knows where after a few months in WI, the chances of us catching up again in person may be slim.  I’ll miss her.

Luckily, we have facebook.  And pinterest.  We will send each other messages.  But still this move seems so much more final than other ones I’ve made.  In the past, I’d always known I was coming back to somewhere.  I’m not coming back to the Cities in the near future, and Denise is leaving too.

I’m not sure how else to sum up this blog post and these feelings but with an ‘ugh.’

Ugh.