It's departure time

I should be asleep. Since a few hours. But the thing is, my luggages are not complete. The electronic gadgets still need to charge, clothes need to dry. I still have to figure out what stuff I'll sacrifice to be able to carry everything.

In a few hours, I'll leave my native Sherbrooke for six months. I've never been away from my town for that long. Never! And yet, I just feel emptiness. Six months, that is a very long time, but it's short to travel around the world.

"You must be excited!", everybody asks.

No! Niet! No butterflies. Just sweet resignation. A survival mechanism, probably, like for the one who jumps in space in spite of a fear of heights. The brain got disconnected, is unable to process it all. Probably doesn't want to get what is happening, neither the consequences of past and future choices. Doesn't want to anticipate all the problems that will inevitably come in each time zone.

The people, they'll live by procuration. Have already started. That's a lot of occasionnal tourists I bring with me, in a metaphoric way. They tell me to make to most of it at all time, even if each time I travel, I tell myself the same thing without feeling anything more. Those people will wake up every morning in their daily life. Excitement will go away. The Earth will keep on turning. And when I'll be back, they'll be surprised to find out all I missed that happened here. "True, you were already gone when..."

I wanted to go.

I'm going!

But it's scary in a way. The cartesien planner in me has been taking each day at a time for a couple a weeks now. And he doesn't understand. Doesn't understand how the world turns without his cartesien logic. All of that while facing the evidence.

No kids. No house. Tired of waiting on the world to change. That crazy urge to breath new air. To live without those sticks that break themselves in my front wheel. That crazy urge to dip my lips in a big bowl of freedom. To take care of the "all-alone" (tu-seul) in me, to take an expression from the french-canadian author Michel Tremblay.

There is also my thirties, waving not that far in front of me, that I can see because it didn't make me nearsighted yet.

There is no good reason to leave. Just reasons to stop hanging on. Just reasons to take the steering wheel to stop going nowhere.

I'm not going to find the unexpected in me. "You'll change, you'll see", you'll tell me. Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe I was already the one I'll be when I'll get back.

So don't tell me I won't be back before the end of summer. My brain still thinks it's only going for a short holiday on the superficial beaches and boulevard of California.

Note

To all of those who thought : "We won't write to you. You'll have so much more to do than read what we send..."

I answer : don't hesitate. I will read your letters with joy and will answer faster than you think. I'll be exploring, but I won't disappear. Skype, Facebook and others are already bookmarked on my computer.