just think. three weeks from tomorrow, you'll be on your way to germany.

i can hear my mom's voice in my head. just think, just think. everything is a just think in some direction- some measurement of time forward or backward, noting how different things will be in relation to now. just think, a week from yesterday i'll have moved out of my apartment. just think, a week from tomorrow zach will be two months old. just think, in two and a half weeks, you won't have a home or anything but a pink suitcase. just think, three and a half months from three weeks from tomorrow you'll be on your way back from germany.

my mind is racing with numbers. 8 shifts left at fly. 6 nights until i leave that i don't have plans. 3 days until my parents come. 7 things left on my germany to-do list. 1001.14 dollars to pay off on my credit card for the plane ticket. 17 days before i leave my beloved apartment. 5 days where i have no home. everything is quantified, made into lists. i feel frantic to hold onto the bits of my life that are familiar and comfortable, like if i craft them into numbers i'll have some idea where the pieces are going- i could follow the bookkeeping of my life- but it's all suddenly started rushing. it's like watching a bathtub empty. for a while, the water level just sinks gradually, barely noticeable. then towards the end, everything becomes frenzied. a whirlpool, hurried and wild- racing toward that last gulp. i imagine henry looking longingly at the end of his precious bath water as it swirls away from him, waving. bye-bye, he'd say. goodbye water. i miss henry.

i am perhaps the only person who views a summer in germany with such horror. i am not afraid of germany. i am afraid of being un-here. here, which is a very carefully sculpted collection of people and routines and interactions. it is lunches with kate and afternoon tv on the bed with dana. it is a white bow in my hair and a different ruffled dress for every day. it is walking on the right side of the street, even if the sun is on the left. it is naps at 3 pm and work in the evenings and sake bombs when i said i wouldn't drink. it is baking on the weekends and thursday pedicures. it is my shower in the morning that starts with shampoo and ends with shaving my right leg. it is being the same. it is safe and repetitive and predictable. it is what i like.

i am afraid of what will happen when i remove all the structure, as erratic as it may seem. i am afraid of what remains. where is beth. how is beth. who will i be when i can't wear something different every day for three months and when there aren't typewriters lining my shelves. am i a product of the surroundings i've crafted for myself or the creator of them. will i recognize myself. do i want to. 

what came first- the chicken or the egg. 

just think.

i am afraid of thinking. just thinking. i am unravelling all the distractions i've wrapped myself- placing them in boxes- and am taking just my self on a journey to see what happens. that scares me.

so here i go. three weeks from tomorrow, everything starts to be different. i can go anywhere. i've written those words before, said them before, thought them before, and mostly ended up right where i started. three weeks from tomorrow, i go to germany. i can go anywhere. and this time, if i end up back where i started, i'll believe where this is where i'm supposed to be. just think, a year from three and a half months from three weeks from tomorrow, you'll have been home from germany for a year and everything will be different. or maybe just the same. and i ask myself, which is scarier.