Holy Crap

I just got done looking at the list of things I have to do before I go to sleep this Friday night. It seems simultaneously far away and so close that I can't breathe.

Maybe I just never let it completely sink in. The list is long. Not so long it can't be done, but long enough to make me want to pull the covers over my head and hope it will all go away somehow.

I was sitting here about a half hour ago and I had to get up to get something. I felt the by-now familiar pull of gravity on the heavy bit of my stomach that's sticking out, and it hit me all at once.

I'm the adult. The one on this end of the move, anyway. I have to do these things. I have to grab them and make them all happen. No one is going to swoop in and make it all go away. I have to be the grown up and take the responsibility that it will all happen.

Then it all really hit me. The number of living beings counting on me to not screw this up, this series of things that are now my responsibility, is the largest it has ever been in my life, and this is the first time I didn't have a safety net of my parents or someone else behind me to help me in case there's one last little thing that I just couldn't seem to manage.

If I mess something up, it could mean anything from inconvenience to a financial penalty to complete and utter logistical disaster.

Somehow, we both have to be in St. Louis a week from tomorrow. I know it sounds dumb that I just didn't get it until now, but I just did.

The hardest thing on my list right now is getting some effing sleep. That list is just sitting there, lurking on my desktop and making my head spin. I understand that there is little I can do to affect the situation at 2:00 in the morning on the Labor Day holiday, but somehow my brain thinks that keeping me awake will be helpful in some way.

Screw it. I'm at least going to turn out the light and close my eyes. Maybe the rest will follow if I just let it happen. Maybe I should enjoy the one thing that's just supposed to happen, the thing that doesn't take a phone call, planning, negotiating, action.

I think I actually realized I have to be a grown up.