Something Has Ended...

I was sad today. It seemed the only healthy thing to do. I was leaving, something was ending. For all that I am excited to be going somewhere else, the fact of leaving demanded to be acknowledged. So I had lunch with a friend at work and I felt sad.

I outlined my plan to someone from Midstate who, like most, asked if I was excited. I told him all about my emotional scheduling, how I am scheduled to be sad today and excited tomorrow. He said that he had never even considered this concept of emotional scheduling before and, I’ll admit, after I explained it it did sound a little odd. I wonder, though, how much healthier we all would be if we consciously took the time to be sad, to acknowledge and recognize change. Even good change still means something has ended. That hurts.

There was a day several months ago when “Spend time with disappointment” made it onto my to-do list. A possibility had resolved and not how I’d hoped. I was sad, but since it had just been a possibility there wasn’t anything concrete to mourn. I knew, though, that if I didn’t mourn I wouldn’t be able to move on. So I put it on my to-do list, in between “Mop” and “Laundry”, and I sat down with my journal and, by gum, I was sad. I was disappointed up to the hilt for about twenty minutes. Then I closed my journal, dried my tears and went on with my day. On to “Laundry”, I suppose.

So today I am sad. I have left a place that I have worked for the past 15 months. Since I am so ridiculously bad at compartmentalizing my world into neat pockets of existence, this workplace became part of my mission, part of my passion and what I researched and thought about. I worked closely with some lovely souls and, I’m told, was of huge help to them. That part of my world is no more that is something worth mourning.

Something has ended.

And that is sad.