Voices

J-- writes to me saying that nine weeks will pass in no time, it'll be simple, I'll soon be gone.

C-- assures me there's little to do to pack up everything I own in a few short afternoons; she'll help me, will do some of it while I'm working. Why don't I merely sell everything I own? It'll be easy.

D-- encourages me to change flight plans to chase the sun and the fun, warns me that I need to consider safety as a quantity unknowable by European standards.

R-- insists I visit him before I leave, points out that flights to Germany are cheap and plentiful, and I have tons of cash now.

Colleagues at work have stopped with the fawning, and delve into sarcasm. "You'll be back here before you know it. Oh yes. You're not leaving. You'll be back."

J-- isn't paralysed by fear and lack of sleep. C-- doesn't even know where I live. A flight to R--'s will take me ten hours for just one night unless I pay top dollar. And I have other, more elastic things to spend top dollar on. My colleagues know full well that such cynicism forms the driving need for me to leave.
I've twice lost everything I ever owned already, and feel a faint soul tremble at the idea of volunteering to dislocate myself from things which root me all over again. D-- assumes I've a cast iron itinerary formed by guidebooks that locks me into the Great White Tourist. I haven't. Actually I've booked five flights, mostly a month apart, with no idea why these places are worth going to, or what I'm going to do there.

There's a gap of knowledge, here, but that's not it. They're not leaving so it's not their gap.

It's a dislocation between my not knowing how to talk about it, and your assuming that what you think it feels like is true.