Like a Salad on a Parachute

I've finally come up with a way to explain how life is feeling for me right now. The picture came to me last night and it describes what I'm feeling perfectly. So picture this:

Big parachute (the kind we all played with in elementary school).

Every aspect of my life is sitting on the parachute.

On the count of three, the parachute goes up.

Every aspect of my life goes flying in all directions.

I manage to hold onto Nathan so we stick together pretty well (very well!) and land before the rest, alone in a strange place.

Slowly, as days go by, a few familiar pieces of our life fall into place around us (our own furniture, our own food, our own books) but many, many pieces are nowhere to be seen (our house, our jobs, our town, our people) and some have landed in different places than they were before and will never be quite the same due to distance (our friendships).

It's a strange thing to feel so displaced. Routine and familiarity ground me. And yet I feel like I deal relatively well with change. For that I am thankful. But it is still such a weird feeling, knowing that the life that I had a week ago (had just started packing up the house) is so vastly different from the one I have now. You'll be happy to hear, though, that I'm the same person in this "new life". haha. I'm more stressed than I've been in years, but I'm the same old Niki. And I'll keep blogging (if people are reading) as I chalk up one adventure after the next.

To those who are reading in my old town, I miss you. I miss seeing you when I go to get groceries or when I walk the dog. I miss seeing you at work or while getting the mail. I miss talking to you on the street. I miss having our lives intersect, as small as those crossings may have seemed. I'm in a new place where no one knows me and I miss you. Thanks for making "A" home for me for the last four years. It definitely became just that: home.