Bittersweet

3 more weeks before I head back home. I've been having recurring dreams and nightmares about it. I don't know if it's helping me prepare for what's to come or just exemplifying my fears and making it worse.

The biggest fear I have for now is going back to a life I feel I've grown out of. The daily dramas in the family or amongst friends I've successfully been oblivious to for the past 3 months. Will I go back to the person I was? Will people return to treating me the same way when I lose my space to be who I really am? Will it be a good change, a bad change or worse of all, no change?

Am I ready to move on to greater heights for myself? Am I ready to be more financially independent? Am I ready to move away from being perpetually glued to my boyfriend to ultimately being alone again? Nobody instantly there to talk to, nobody to snuggle with when I'm in great pain or upset. The sacrifices we have to make to ensure our future is brighter than what it is now.

Painful but vital. My layers of defence immediately shattered apart completel - every time we have to go through the initial separation over and over and over again. And all that's left is a dismal vulnerable vacant person - void until I pick myself up again.

But I feel I'm getting stronger each time with the strengthened belief that this won't last and that it's only in due time that we get our turn to peel off the walls of separation. And it's only immense luck that I have the best of friends to look forward to better things with. Without them, I would never have been able to bounce back half as quickly as I always did. If my partner is my pillar of strength, my friends would be the vines that grow with me, our lives intertwined, sometimes not, but constantly within reach.

I can only look forward, and not back.