Leaving everything behind is somewhat terrifying. I've never really really let everything go before and just moved.  I guess I'm not entirely doing that even now.  I'm staying with friends, and they're helping me out along the way, but it feels like I'm uprooted, floating free.  The earthy part of my soul doesn't like it very much.  It want's solidity, and it's stubborn.  But the water part of my soul, it thinks that it could get to like this, this washing free of everything that hurts and makes things bad.

I'm able to be different, to be myself.  There's no turning back from the course that I set myself now, and I don't know when I will reach a place where I am ready to settle myself again.  Wherever it is, it will fit better than the desert city that I've been living in, and the roots that tied my back to the place that is poisoned by my parents.

I'm going somewhere comfortable now, even if that isn't where my course will eventually take me.  There is wind and water and earth there, and not so much fire. I've missed water in my environment. I really do want to stay there, in the land of the Cascades, near the sea and lakes.  But maybe it won't be for the moment at least.  The flow of things might take me onwards, towards the east, or further north still, or maybe even out into the ocean.  I won't have to go back to the land of sand and heat and dry though.  I've had enough of that.

There aren't any more poisoned secrets, I told my parents, and they aren't happy, but they'll either learn to deal with it, or in time, we will go off on different courses.  I don't have to go back to them though.  We're done now, and I'm free of them, free to flow away.  Sitting in my friend's living room, where I've been sleeping on the couch, I feel like I'm me, no strings, no forces trying to make me something that I'm not.  Those forces are still there, but their ties to me, their roots, have been severed.

I don't have much.  Three bags and the clothes on my back.  Enough to fly with.  But that's OK.  A friend is keeping some things for me, but I don't really need them in the long run.  It would be nice if I could keep them, and I probably will manage, but everything that I need that I can't pick up cheaply in another place is in those three bags.

When I go north, I'll be sleeping on a friend's floor.  Not the most dignified thing ever, but it will give me time to get on my feet, find a job, all that.  I hope that something will work out pretty quickly.  I'll probably share an apartment with the same friend if I stay there, and living with someone I know would be nice.  Someone who I have chosen to live with, in a place that I want to live.

Plans for grad school will probably be pushed back a little bit.  That could be better, but oh well, things could definitely be worse too.  And if I end up working as a secretary for a few years, or even working some sort of food services job, well, it's not the end of the world, and it might pay my way through my Master's degree.  I'll apply to schools in that area, other places too of course, but it would be nice to stay near Seattle.  I love it there.

Driving up to San Francisco, in my friend's tiny car, well that will be an adventure.  On the other hand, it will be movement, a way down the riverbed path that is opening up before me.  Part of the life that I am starting to live as an adult now.  It feels nice, moving towards that point, starting to really be a person with his own identity.

I have friends, and I have all the family I need, whether my parents come around or not.  I don't have a job yet, but I'll find one in time, and I'm going to write.  I'm going to make sure that I write a lot, hell, maybe I'll even get published more, that would be nice.  The big thing is though, I'm free.  The earth in my soul, well, it's not going to be entirely happy until I have the chance to settle again, but I can live with that. Over the years, the water has grown to be a stronger and stronger pull anyhow.  Roots are a hindrance when they bring poison and pain into the system.  I look forward to the day when I can settle again, and let the water flow around me in a pattern, the course of my days, but until then, I will not let myself stop.

Somewhere, beyond the clear point in my mind's eye, there is something good waiting, and I will reach it eventually.  The tides of my soul pull me on, and nothing will stop me from continuing down the path that I have chosen.  The path may change, but it will be mine.