Packing Tired Cobras

It's my second to last night here before I move back to Colorado. I'm sitting cross-legged under the yellow striped duvet that covers my bed. The left side of the bed is covered with scarves and t-shirts that still have to be packed and two legal pads that I need to find a home for. This morning dad and I picked up some cardboard boxes I found free on Craig's List - three long, skinny boxes with handles, two big boxes and one small square one. I won't need all of them, but as I put everything together, I'm surprised at how much stuff I need to get back to Colorado. Since I'll be back here a couple times over the next few months for weddings and doctor appointments, I'll be able to collect and bring back whatever I leave here, so right now I'm only taking about half of my things. Still, half is turning out to take up more space that I would've guessed. They're all things I've used though, not just superfluous junk, which makes me feel better.

Today I found out that COBRA has decided to reinstate me. I can't begin to say how amazing I feel. A current of nervous electricity ran through me as I opened the email and read, "Hi Erica, I got you approval for reinstatement". An enormous weight was lifted off of my Atlas shoulders. I started laughing in my car, parked in front of my therapist's office, looking, I'm sure, like a total nut job, not quite sure if I should welcome or blink back the tears that waited just behind my eyes. I picked my phone back up and my hands shook as I typed my reply on the little slide-out keyboard. Everything has gone so much better than I could have ever hoped - the surgeries, the follow-up, the insurance - everything. I guess I must've done something right!

I feel like there are so many things I want to write about, so many little experiences, feelings, thoughts that I want to word, like a river inside me that transforms into a sparkling, sunkissed waterfall as it leaves my mouth and flows onto the page. I want to write about packing and the conflicting emotions it brings, knowing that it's the right time for me to go but already missing my parents and my aunts; how I can look in a mirror and like what I see and not feel all of the insecurities I felt in the Bahamas; how I started to use my body again as I walked to the Sea Center (or whatever it's called) in the Bahamas for nine am yoga, and how I almost passed out more than once during that first class but every day got better and better as the young instructor taught patiently in both English and French, ("inspirer, expirer" = "breathe in, breathe out"). I want to write about them all, but not tonight. My heavy eyelids are drooping over the eyes I got peach-scented soap in when I washed my face this evening, which I take as my cue to go to sleep.

Goodnight