Goodbye Gut

In 13 days I will be boarding a plane to a new place. Not just any new place, but an entirely different continent. I'm not sure if I'm excited, exhausted, or completely terrified. Perhaps I am all of the above. Whatever it is I'm feeling, it is a weird one. I feel despondent and earnest all at the same time. My gut is wrapped up in some sort of foreign knot that is begging to be undone but doesn't know how. I don't know if I want to write, read, create, get laid or scream. But I need some sort of release. Maybe it is a strangeness that comes from waiting. Waiting to be finished with goodbyes and have my feet planted in Australian soil. I'm going to assume it is the goodbyes that I am just ready to be done with. I have been saying goodbye to people my whole life. Such is the way of a child of divorce. You say goodbye to daddy every other weekend, goodbye to daddy's relatives even more often. And such is the way of someone that has been exposed to death frequently and often. I've said goodbye to four friends, all far to young, in the past four years alone. And such is the way of someone in the military. You meet, love, leave, and forget people in the blink of an eye. And sometimes you don't forget, you forge bonds with people that can only be forged by soldiers. It's an understanding that time, though not irrelevant, is in fact relative. Three months is not a measurement of time but a measurement of experience- the experiences those you connect with can have in that short amount of time. They are condensed but they are extraordinary. When I left home, left basic, left AIT...I still had the belief that goodbyes were always temporary, that I would see those that I loved again. Now, four years later I don't feel this way at all. As I say goodbye to people, I say goodbye knowing that it is quite possibly the last time I will ever see them. It's overwhelming. I am used to goodbyes, but somehow, these goodbyes are not the same. They're hard. 

I have goodbye gut.

And it isn't pleasant.