gone

this is the first summer of my life where i have the opportunity to leave home. just get up and roll out of town. so i do. for the past few weeks i've left the palouse and done some adventuring. some with brelin in seattle, some in the tri, and then some in the couer d'alene area. and, i won't be in town the next three weekends either. i'll be gone.
for me though, being gone is a pretty nice thing. i get a little stir crazy when i have to stay in one place for a long time. i like to spread myself thin, get done doing laundry from the trip before just in time to pack it in my backpack and go somewhere else. what happens, though, is that i leave. and everyone else stays. i've been missing those people that used to make up my every day in pullman. i miss knowing who i was going to sit by in my rhetoric classes (always daniel schafer for four semesters in a row) and i also miss getting my latte every morning from the bookie barista that i have a secret crush on. (oh damn, guess it's not so secret anymore). i continually toe the line between a creature of habit and a frenzied being who can't sit still. maybe that's why my father rocks so much in that damn recliner. hmmm...
those friends though. in my mind they always stay. those friends that you forget about here. they stay, and you think they're going to stay forever. but they leave. it just happened to me.
i showed up at my apartment and erica's stuff was off the walls and gone from the kitchen. no whale painting. no kitchen gadgets. no canadian flag. all in boxes and all taken down. an overwhelming sense of sadness came over me and something like loneliness sunk in for a moment. soon she will leave my apartment and i will be alone in that place for a little while. she will be gone and i will be the one to stay. i never stay. i wonder what it will be like. it's like that part of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with the big pile of potatoes- "This MEANS something!" i think this moment just might mean something.