To May, as you look at your watch and sigh:

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I know, it’s time. You’ve got a midnight curfew and I can’t make you late. But know that you’re leaving under heavy protest!

If you could just stay a little longer. Don’t let that thug June bully you away. You deserve far more than 31 days. What an unjust calendar system we have! February has been petitioning for years and was finally awarded one extra day but only every four years. What a scam.

All my thanks for making your annual visit. I enjoyed reaching my 24th birthday, ringing the school bell for the last time, and eating ice cream (although I don’t need you to stop by to indulge in a cone of vanille et fraise from the Star gas station.)

Why the dramatic departure, you ask? I’ve never been through such a tortured goodbye with you before. Maybe it’s because June has never scared me like it does at this very moment. If you thesaurus scared, you’ll have every emotion flowing from my head to my heart and gushing out my eyes in the form of wild tears that my roommate-brother has now gotten used to. What a guy. (Lately he’s also had to adjust to my strongly abrupt mood swings. I sit for hours pensively working at my computer or reading a book. Suddenly, he finds me packing boxes, making a spreadsheet of our souvenir gifts, and selling unopened antibacterial gel to the neighbors. Indeed, what a guy.)

So, it’s time to say goodbye to you. Oh, but how? Cue the handy acronym! We missionaries carry them around for times like these. The closure model introduced to me during my training two years ago seems like something invented by the Amazon proselytizers of old. Build a R.A.F.T. they said. Oh, but how? Make Reconciliation, find Affirmation, say Farewells, and Think destination. Practical, charming even. But I don’t have the best record for taking advice. Exhibit A: The melted hole from ironing my Adidas wind pants in 8th grade.

All childish errors aside, I have to listen this time. I have to build a RAFT because it’s I that am leaving, not you. I am moving into June with two standard issue 23-kilo Rubbermaid tubs, a few thousand pictures of this special place, and that one poisonous emotion of fear.

I have absolutely nothing to be afraid of I tell myself. Some people, much braver than I, start over with nothing. No plan. No place. No clue. Spoiled me, look at what I have. A detailed plan with an acceptance letter to a fine grad school Education program. A comfortable place I’ll call home with a bed of my own, a Pampered Chef casserole dish, a vintage typing desk, and a coffee shop within walking distance. The rest, though, is fill-in-the-blank with a few multiple choice. And I haven’t studied.

So it’s really me standing on the front porch, clutching my car keys, glancing at my watch, and sighing as I see the seconds forcing me closer to June (who will NOT receive such poignant letters like you, sweet May. I’m confident my negative sentiments toward that month will be appropriately expressed in letters about the dreaded heat, lack of daily routine, and tiresome re-runs. Ugh, June. Booo.)

You’ll always be my favorite. See you next time I pass through with my new flip flops, shimmery lip gloss (with SPF 15), and hopefully a little less fear about the unknowns.

Until then,
Amber

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Filed under Letters of Fear, Letters of Goodbye, Letters of Love

Tags: Acronyms, Adidas windpants, Culture Shock, Ice Cream, June, Pampered Chef, RAFT, Rubbermaid tubs