We left Hawaii at the beginning of the month for good. And we haven't spent much time being sad. Instead, we've been celebrating the upsides of leaving, like affordable groceries ($2.99 gallons of milk v. $9.99), seeing family, driving cars that pass safety inspection, and finally being able to buy "nice" things because we won't have to leave them behind when we move. We even ordered a Vitamix and had it shipped to Utah as a welcoming gift to ourselves.
But the other night before falling asleep, I thought about the small space we left behind, and for the first time I felt sad. Real honest sadness. Chase and I laid on our backs in the dark and took turns remembering out loud. I cried, thinking about the one-room apartment that we took over with our singing and our meals and our fights and our laughter; our pictures, homemade shelves and thrift store finds. I cried because the day we moved out, our apartment was a bare white box full of none of those things, and I wish I had taken more time to remember everything before it was emptied.
I can't find the right words to explain what I felt. But I mourned for my memory. For its patchiness. Because the things I remember will never be whole. My memory of our first home will never contain the myriad of emotions that I experienced there. I can't justly recreate it in my mind. I am three weeks out, and already I forget the color of our carpet and the contents of our fridge.
And that's okay. I can't freeze time, and i'm coming to terms with that (although if I could, now wouldn't be a bad time to do it).
But sometimes, I think, it's okay to be sad for the places and people you've left behind.
