The moment it really hit

Even though I've been building up to this moment for a few weeks, the reality that my life is about to completely change again hadn't hit me until we came into the home stretch. The smallest things will set you off when you're avoiding confronting the emotional rollercoaster. Turns out that today it was going to the library.

Yes, the library.

The small-town library that I'd been in and out of a thousand times. The place where I took my toddler on rainy Saturdays to keep him entertained when we couldn't go outside. The place where I had checked out CDs to play in my classroom. The place where I got all the free magazines that were eagerly devoured by 20-year-old boys. The place where I had checked out tons of books to supplement my classroom library. The library was my low-budget entertainment destination of choice.

I was hit by a sudden wave of strange and utter devastating finality while turning in those last straggling library books. I barely stammered through the process of surrendering my card: "I won't need this anymore, I'm moving back to Portland." I hadn't realized how much I had grown to love the place until that very moment. I had to blink back a few tears to make it out the door, and once I was outside, I let it hit, all the held-back emotions that I had managed to contain, about leaving this small magical place that I've been living for the past year and a half. It seems strangely appropriate that as a reading teacher, and a former library worker, the library would be the place to finally trigger that sense of loss.