the hard goodbye... part 1

There I was. In the middle of my living room floor. My furniture was gone. All that was left were some items in my kitchen so I could eat, my CD player and my TV and DVD player so I could have some entertainment.... some good quality entertainment.

I'll get to what I was doing in the middle of the floor in a minute, but first I need to explain some things...

My brothers and my dad had come to my apartment to take the big items away and haul them away to my parent's house. My bed? Gone. My couch? Gone. My coffee table? Gone. My dresser? Gone. I had piles of clothes to sort through, dishes and whatever kitchen stuff I had to pack and send to my parents, and some personal items. Where was I sleeping? My friend, and adopted little sister lived in the apartment below me, and ages before we had swapped keys and kind of combined our apartments, so if I needed to sleep or anything, I just needed to go down to my other apartment and help myself. We would snuggle every night, and wake each other up in the morning anyway, so it just made things easier. {sidebar, this friend is now in Africa, doing her first semester abroad. Pretty awesome, right?}.

My massive dog was staying with my friend, Brettley, who has now officially taken him as his own. Which was amazing. I can't thank him enough for what he has done for me, and he seriously has been an amazing friend.

So back to me sitting in the middle of the living room floor. I had been watching the last season of Friends, and if anyone has a heart and has seen the last bit of it, knows that it's about things ending. If you haven't seen it, I'm going to ruin it for you. And slap you across the face for not watching one of the best shows on TV. PS... Spoiler alert.

So, in the last little bit a lot happens. But I'm going to focus on one main thing. Ross and Rachel. The epic relationship of Ross and Rachel. Everyone knows about it.

I was watching the last few episodes while I was sorting through my clothes, trying to figure out what to donate, keep, and store. I was sitting, literally sitting on a pile of clothes, clutching my teddy bear, Frank Hernando, that Mr. Brown Boot had given me. At this point, Rachel had gotten a job in Paris, and was saying her final goodbyes to everyone at her goodbye party. Everyone except Ross. Because it was too hard. Of course he was offended. I would have been too.

Bla bla bla... The end up having sex, and they both realize they are in love with each other still. That's the thing that hit me. And she is going to leave for Paris anyway. I already know how it ends. Bla bla bla happily ever after.

But there I was. Sitting on a pile of clothes. Hugging the Brown Boot bear. My red, puffy eyes fixed on the TV, with tears streaming down my face. Friends was making me cry.

Remember how I mentioned my friend that had they key to my apartment? My door was already unlocked, and she came in to see that pathetic sight. Me, crying, holding a damn teddy bear... PA.THE.TIC. So pathetic, she actually sad, "AWE!" out loud. I'm not even close to kidding.

She dragged my pathetic ass out of my pathetic apartment. Dragged me to the coffee house I wasn't managing anymore, and made me breathe fresh air and sunshine. Did I mention that I was carrying the teddy bear still? Yeah. I was. Did I say pathetic? PATHETIC.

A day or so later, I had my mom's car and I was running errands. There were last minute things I knew that I needed to get in Utah before I moved to Florida. My sweet friend was with me still. Every step of the way. Sure, she wasn't very happy about me leaving, but she still supported me. She even went with me to get to my birth control.

We were leaving Planned Parenthood, after almost getting pushed off the road by an idiotic trucker (two years later, and I still remember that jerk...) when I got the fatal text message.

I don't remember how it started. I don't remember what the first message said. I just knew who it was from. When I saw his name on my screen... I was shocked. I started freaking out to my friend who had been there with me through the past year of my hell. It was Brown Boot.

He heard I was leaving.

He wanted to see me one last time.

He wanted to have one last night with me.

one week made it home...

It's been a while since I've posted, but that doesn't matter. Sorry! I've been a little preoccupied with things like... Life. And the other blog. I think part of my experience in Florida was trying to block itself out. So I'll do the best I can to remember, even though it has been over two years since it's all happened.

After that first night at Willy's I knew that I wanted this place to be home. The humidity didn't bother me half as bad as I thought it would, and I loved the sun shine. Did I mention palm trees? Because I love them. And the fact that there was a beach? I don't even remember if I ended up going to the beach before I actually moved there. But I knew I would get there at some point. The second the plane landed, I was home.

After Willy's, we finally got to go back to Jamie's apartment, for the first time, and the party continued. I met more people

and shook more hands and drank more beer. I slept on an air mattress in the living room, next to Eddie. Nothing happened that night... That mistake would come later, after a good amount of drinking.... Who knew that my alcohol tolerance would go up as much as it did while I was there?

The few days I was there didn't make it easy to go home. In fact, I was trying to convince my family to pack up my apartment for me so I wouldn't have to go back, which obviously didn't happen. My dad helped me book a one way plane ticket back to Florida so I could head back to Utah, pack my things, and say goodbye to my friends and family.

Before I left, I applied for a job at Bennigan's, the restaurant they all worked at, and who knew that a job at a restaurant would change my life so much. I'm still in shock.

We of course had to go to Disney while I was there. Because we were literally a mile away from Disney property, we had a lot of friends that worked at the different parks and could get us in for free, which meant a lot of time playing with the Mouse. I got to see a little bit of everything. And they showed me different things behind the scenes and told me different secrets.

All of it was magic to me. The last time I had been to Disney World, I was knee high to a grasshopper. I still believed that I was a princess, and carried around my stuffed puppy named Stacy. The only thing I remember from that trip, was seeing the green flash of light as the sun set over the ocean.

The entire time we walked through the parks, I did the happy dance. I smiled the whole time. I was giddy. I was a kid in a candy store with an eternal sugar rush. This was going to be home, and I was going to be the luckiest girl in the entire world. My best friend was on my arm, and I had the possibility of a new life. A fresh start. A place where no one knew me and where my life wasn't tainted by past relationships, that seemed to keep working themselves back into my life. No one would judge me for who I was, because they didn't know me. I promised myself to not have a relationship and work on knitting a sweater, in a Grey's Anatomy sense.

I honestly felt like all my dreams were about to come true. Totally Disney cliche, but I finally understood what it all meant. I loved Florida.

We watched the Wishes firework show for my first time, and everything seemed to come together. I think I may have even cried. Eddie sang along... Which was honestly annoying, but I guess you kind of have to sing along when you've heard it so many times. My heart was soaring. I kept thinking of all the possibilities that awaited me in Florida. If I wanted to, I could even audition for a role as a Disney Character. My world opened up. Wide.

The entire time we were at Disney, Manda kept saying that she loved going to Disney with new people, because it was it made the magic real for her again. No matter how old the person was, going to Disney made them a kid, and it was okay. It was fine to run around in a park and get excited about seeing people dressed up in costumes. It made it okay to believe in magic. It made it okay to ride around on rides, and to not over analyze every detail. It made reality disappear.... For a while it's okay. And when reality hits it hits hard. Again, we will get to that later.

When they took me to the airport at the end of the week I was sad to go. I didn't want to go back to the hell that I believed Utah was. I didn't want to say goodbye to everyone. I didn't want to see my life in boxes and organize the things that I would take and leave. If I could, I would have taken both worlds. I would have taken the snow and city life that I had in Utah, the real friends that I had, the coffee house I worked at.... I would have moved it all to Florida and combined the best of both things together. But that's obviously not possible.

I left some of my things in Jamie's apartment so that I would have more room to carry things back from Utah with me. I knew I was making the right decision, and if I doubted myself, I reassured myself that I needed to be with my person. I needed to do this. I needed to be in Florida.

I knew that Florida was the place for me. I didn't know why. But I knew that I needed to be there. Fate would later have it's way with me.... I would say goodbye to my past and welcome the future. But what would that entail?