It’s an ending I’m feeling. It’s in my bones and on my skin.

It’s coming and I’m waiting and I’m feeling every ounce of the weight.

That’s all. It’s the weight of the thing. The weight of the ending.

***

It’s been almost a year since I left London.

It’s been the craziest, most growth filled year and I feel it in every part of me. I came home feeling light and in love and addicted to life and all of the good things I had discovered about myself.

I don’t want to think that any of that stopped, because frankly, I’m still in love, still addicted to life and still using all the good things I learned, but everything has changed.

The day to day got harder. Boundaries had to be drawn. Hearts had to be kept at a safe distance and pain made things heavy.

Winter came and if that wasn’t a symbol of how things were feeling internally, then I don’t know what was. There is nothing more poetic than feeling great sadness and then watching the seasons change and leaves fall off trees and then, snow. Every ending has snow. Every beginning, too.

We all know that London is my spiritual headquarters and the result of every dream I’ve ever had. But the other side of that is that I have no idea how to get back. I don’t know how to keep it all. It’s in me, yes, but I am not there. There are laws and regulations and immigration and visas and no British guy wants to marry me, is the short story.

But it changed my life and created my life, so me and London, we go together.

I’ve booked a trip back there in a few weeks. I’m terrified. All I can think of is the sadness that is coming when I leave.

***

When I arrive in London, it will be 1 year exactly since leaving. It’s an anniversary that carries weight with my mind and my heart and so the past month has had me feeling every emotion. I couldn’t figure out why for the longest time, but it’s because the ending has weight. I’m returning, yes, but this long, growing, scary year is ending. It’s a good thing, but it’s heavy.

I’ve been feeling the weight of the ending lately and I expected it to feel lighter.

It’s been a year of learning my worth. Of setting boundaries with the closest possible people and moving them a few steps back from my safest places. It’s been a year of learning to like myself even if others don’t. It was a year of taking 2 steps backwards only to be sprung forward 10 steps.

It was a year of heavy hearts and young lives and tears all around.

It was a year of learning more than I wanted to know about the people I trusted and then learning everything about the people who stepped in to pick up the pieces.

There are people around every corner who give love and you don’t have to ask for it and you don’t have to deserve it and you don’t have to owe your body or your mind. They just give. It was a year of learning to be more like them. Becoming a woman at 31 and becoming a friend at 31 and becoming an adult who is also a daughter and a sister and a partner.

It’s the weight of the ending that makes everything feel heavy right now.

I turned towards something that I thought would feel light and it did and it didn’t and it ended and now it’s okay. But the weight of the thing messed everything up.

***

The weight tells you it’s done. The weight tells you he’s happy without you. The weight tells you the adventure is over. That this isn’t a waiting game, this is the life you have now and live it or don’t but it’s yours.

The weight tells you the magic is dissolving and it was all a dream and they were right.

The weight tells you that the temporary way you lived can’t be sustained. That you need to try harder or choose something else and the weight tells you that you’re scared you might choose something else.

The ending is heavy and it pulls at you and that’s why you wake with knots and you toss and turn and you cry at the silly things and laugh at the absurd. It’s why a message from your friend brings you to tears and why writing doesn’t work and reading doesn’t work and language doesn’t roll the same way off your tongue and you are crashing into men in all the wrong ways.

The weight of this ending of yours, it has you second guessing the people you invite in, the choices you are making and the trust you are lacking in yourself.

***

And now I go back. I left light, and I go back heavy and can it all change again? Is this the routine? I can’t keep it forever but I can have it with me always?

The ending is coming. The seasons change and this chapter closes.

That’s all. It’s just the weight of the ending.

***