blackbird, fly

I cried when I hugged my parents goodbye today. It wasn’t rational and I couldn’t explain it. It was enough to embarrass me and enough to freak out my dad and make my mom cry. I’m going to see them again in two weeks, and I don’t even live in Albany for most of the year anymore. I wasn’t crying because I was leaving home and I wasn’t crying because I was saying goodbye to my parents, as much as I love them.

This is the first time I’ve left home to do something other than school, which will benefit my aspiring career. It’s the first time I’ve chosen, in a serious spectrum, what I need to do over what I want to do. I’m making a bigger deal out of this whole internship/move thing than is warranted, but it’s affected me on a level that I didn’t think it would. I feel as though I’m living the time I will look back on and think of as my coming of age experience, if such a thing can be feasibly defined. To say the death of my childhood, is kind of morbid, but I feel as though I’m changing and, perhaps, growing up.

I’m accomplishing goals in ways I haven’t before. I’m finishing projects that I’ve started when I would normally abandon them. I’ve accepted a challenge for the summer that I want to run from. The reality of what I am doing, right now, is surreal if only because I am actually doing something. You never would have said I could do this-- Never encouraged me to take a chance on something that might mean something for me. You never let me fly.