i've been avoiding this for a while

and the countdown begins tomorrow morning: one week until i leave
so how do you address something like this?
ben says i'm allowed to be sad, that it's legitimate
but there is this part of me that doesn't want to be sad. a part of me that wants to ignore the fact that i'm leaving. so it's not that i'm not sad because i'm going home. how do i explain this, without hurting anyone?
i love my friends in waxhaw. i'm going to be happy to see them, and so happy to have them around. but it's going to take about a week.
see...ben says i need to let people know i'm happy to see them when i come back. but how do i do that, when i've just left a huge part of my life?
talk to anyone who's ever left their home and friends and done something significant in their life. it's impossible to explain to the people you are returning to.

i said it like this today to my friend: remember the way it felt when i first left? remember how hard it was, because you felt the lack of me and i felt the lack of you? well that's how i feel now. the presence of you is great, but i'm feeling the lack of those i left behind.
granted, in a week or so it will be alright, i'll get settled in anew, and i'll do a 180 and you'll never know i was gone.
but it's like...i need to mourn the loss of my life here. no one else is going to do it, so i need to.
if i don't mourn it, it's like it never happened, or it didn't mean anything to me.
but see, now i'm in this strange place. i'm not even crying right now writing this.
it's like, how can i cry when i feel so much joy?
i just spent the morning reading and thinking, the afternoon planning out my road trip with my mom, the evening hugging my dog, talking to my neighbor, and watching billy elliot with my sister.
if i could call anything a satisfying, fulfilled day, today would be it.
i walked down the stairs of her house, slipped my feet into her snow boots, and walked out the door as this rush of satisfaction flowed over me.
i've never felt this peaceful before a huge change before.
today was a little taste of what heaven's going to be like, i know it.
no, i didn't spend all day walking down streets of gold, and i didn't spend all day throwing my crown down.
i spent the day soaking up God's presence through books, through aslan, through lilia, through my mom, through my dog, through my neighbor, through my sister.
a day, so simple and eventless, yet my cup overflows.

how can i mourn at a time like this?
maybe tomorrow it will all change and the tears will be released and i'll take one look at my dog and think how will i live life without her? and take one look at my dad and think how will i make it without him, walking around the house?
but for now, i'm just so happy to be alive.
i'm just so happy to be my father's daughter and to be just like him.
i'm so happy to finally be friends with my sister.
i'm so happy to be myself.
i'm so happy that no matter what happens, what changes, what stupid things i do, ben still likes me and he's still there, on the other end of a phone call.
i'm so happy to be sitting on the couch with my dog at my feet, with her collar off in all of her glory, exuding heat from her little ears and toes and breathing so peacefully that it's impossible to feel any anxiety.

now i'm not ready to leave...but maybe this is a part of the closure i've been praying for?