Tipping Point

I think I finally realized last night what it is I propose to do. I leave Portland in three days, and the country in six. I might have found a more productive way to spend the evening than having an extended panic attack/crying jag, but...what's done is done.

I've been telling myself that most of my lost-shit moments are due to the boy, and I think that is still the majority of it. He's the only one that I anticipate never seeing again, so the potential loss—even though he's arguably less important to me than anyone else I am saying goodbye to—is much greater. But what became clear last night is that the boy is acting as a prism of sorts, and I'm filtering all the rest of my anxiety and nervousness about leaving everything behind through that particular relationship. It's convenient, I suppose, in that it allows me to interact with everyone else without losing it and becoming a great blubbering mass, but then every time I think about the boy (or, potentially, the next time I speak to him) I just literally cannot control myself. It's going to make me look like a crazy person, considering that we really never developed a relationship that can justify that kind of reaction, and I won't be able to control myself enough to explain what is really going on. So I'll end up looking like some sort of drippy madwoman, overreacting in a completely inappropriate way and leaving that as my last interaction with the one person whom I won't ever see again.

See, there again I've managed to focus all of the worry on the boy, when that's really the least important aspect of this whole thing. I'm disturbed by the amount of time and energy I've dedicated to this thing, and I think I'll be very glad to snap out of it. What I will regret, I imagine, is that I spent the last few weeks with my friends and family resenting their presence and the time that could have been spent with the boy. Which would not have been spent with the boy, but which I haven't been able to make myself realize, throughout the course of this thing.

I also get the sense that now I'm just keeping myself busy. I wish there were a way to bank some of this extra time that is driving me so insane, and pull it out once I'm completely under, trying to cram eighteen years worth of British education into my American brain, before I can even begin to consider learning the new information. Head of the class, here I emphatically do not come.