It's Done.

For the last few weeks, I was preparing myself to move on and get over the heartache I've been feeling. Strange, but there was something I was going to do that would be the last--I can't call it an effort, because there's nothing I expected to gain other than my own piece of mind. We'll call it an action.

This action took place on Monday, just before work. Okay, so it was just before I bought a two liter bottle of whiskey and THEN went to work, but still. The point is I did the last thing my heart said I needed to do before getting on with myself. My friends all told me I shouldn't do it, that it would only cause more problems than it solved. But this was something I needed to do for myself, for my own piece of mind. I had so much emotion burning in my heart and I had to let it vent. If I continued to carry it with me, I would be consumed by it. Doing this thing was to let the emotions out, and to let it out was to let it go. I shed the skin of that relationship and began to move forward.

What's odd is how well this seems to have worked. Since then, it's amazing to me how well I seem to have recovered. It sounds cheesy, but I now control my emotions instead of letting them control me. I can work, I can read, watch a movie, hang out with friends, and at (virtually) no time do I sink back into myself and brood.

Of course, I also attribute my newfound peace to the silver lining I mentioned last week. Two weeks ago, on Saturday morning, standing in the chill outside the airport waiting for my ride, I started thinking about whether or not I'd be going to Moscow.

When I first started questioning whether or not I'd be going, I got lots of advice from my friends about why I should go, especially now. I heard lots of reasons, but one rang more loudly than all the others. If I were in a committed relationship, sure I could question leaving for the sake of making the relationship work out. But I didn't have a relationship anymore--all I had was hope. And the hope I had was too weak, too thin of a reason to give up the most grand opportunity of my life. How could I justify giving that up now that the one and only thing that was truly holding me back wasn't holding me back anymore? An excellent point, and I thank the person who first introduced that concept to me, as well as everyone in my life who came after that to tell me the same.

Back to the airport. I began to think, what if my life had gone the way I had planned? Suppose the relationship was all nice and happy, we said our tearful good-byes at the airport, and then I got onto the plane. Once I got to Moscow and the jetlag wore off, I don't suppose it would have taken long before I started to realize just how important she was to me, that I wouldn't want to be there without her in my heart and and in my life. Then I wouldn't have been able to concentrate, I would have started my homesickness and heartbreak then as I felt it a month ago, and believe you me, I would have been on the first plane back home. Of course I can't say these things for certain, but they aren't too impossible to consider.

Now that things have gone the way they have, I can prepare for Moscow with more conviction than I ever had before. Now, with six months to prepare, I can go to Moscow without leaving a significant piece of my heart behind, and I can make the fullest use out of this chance to study at one of the greatest theatres in the world, without the imminent catastrophic distraction I would have faced otherwise.

Of course, this is just another plan, like the one I made when I first got back, and we all know how infrequently a plan is executed in the same fashion it was conceived.

A month ago, I couldn't have imagined how much better I would feel by today. But then, I suppose six months ago I wouldn't have imagined I'd be in the position I'm in now, anyway. Not to mention a year ago, or the year before that . . . .