Detaching…

Well, I am here at LAX — sitting at an airport bar, not drinking…what a difference a few decades make!

It is weird. I feel weird. Like none of this is real. So far this afternoon I have felt and thought all the following:

Why did I want to do this?

How could I not want to do this?

I really like my life at home, why would I go to all this trouble?

Fuck, I love adventure…I may never come back (just kidding mom).

I am already anxious about work — whatever will they do without me?

Wait — what if work learns they can live without me?

And, fuck work, I don’t care at all.

Ok, maybe I care but only a little…

Ok, come on, you care a lot

I miss my kids and animals…

I wish I could take them with me

No I don’t

This is good for me

This feels way too self indulgent and extravagant!

So as I sit here with all of the above swimming in my head, I am grateful that at least my exterior is calm and together.

I am absolutely grateful to have become a person who can be relied upon to do what she says she is gonna do, most of the time. Life is this grand that I get to go on vacation for two weeks solo and feel happy, content and not overly anxious.

This feels big. Like super ridiculously big. I know people go to London and Ireland all the damn time, but not me. I don’t. I got every 35 years. So this feels pretty monumental to me.

I find myself increasingly grateful for my ability to house all the contrary feelings that pop into my mind and run through my soul. I am a contrarian to my core. I want to go and I want to stay. I want to never return and I want to go home right now. I can’t wait to get there and I am really enjoying sitting here in this airport bar doing absolutely nothing. (I have only checked work emails for about an hour…)

Life is a funny combination of moving forward and holding back. And that is exactly where I am right now. I am missing the life that will happen in my daily world while I am gone. My daughter and my intricate webs of intertwined daily living. Talking to my mom every single morning. Texting with my son all day long. The cats and their shenanigans. The dogs and their attendant anxiety every single time I look like I am going somewhere without them which includes the bathroom.

What is landing for me is that I love my life. And I will miss how I usually live this life of mine. And I am excited to take this show on the road. The Erin Show…the bizarre amalgamation that is me. I am excited for the new experiences, for the people I will meet, for the love I will share, for the friendships I will make, for the ones I will strengthen, for the adventures I will have, for the things I will see, for the interruption to my daily grind that I pray will make me appreciate the amazing life I have more, in all the ways.

So as I sit in this airport bar, drinking Pellegrino, watching all the international travelers hustle and bustle their way through, I find myself happy and relaxed and ready for the grand adventure to begin.

I have Euros

I have Pounds

I have dollars

I have credit

I have everything charged. I have service. I have all the clothes I could possibly need and then a whole other suitcase with a whole bunch more. I am excited, I am ready, and I am so grateful my life has taken this amazing turn that grants me passage back to the past via my future.

I am grateful that I will not, at least of my own volition, end up in countries I didn’t intend to go to because I got drunk on the train and was incapable of following simple, clear instructions that were repeated for at least an hour.

I am grateful that I have grown into a person that will not meet someone in customs and fall in like with them, then have to extricate myself from the messiness of international love affairs.

I am grateful I will have total recall of all I do, all I say, all the vistas seen and all the friends yet met.

I am grateful to be here, right now, when the journey is just beginning and I hope to savor and relish every single delightful minute as this grand adventure unfolds.

Thank you God for my life. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you work for covering me. Thank you mom for stepping into my shoes. Thank you Grace for taking care of all the critters. Thank you Logan for telling me I deserve this. Thank you everyone who supported me in getting here. Thank you for my sobriety and my emotional bandwidth to do things that lie squarely outside my usual and familiar.

Thank you, again, still.