That’s an awkward title, but this is an awkward moment. 

You made the decision to leave based on valid reasons thought about for weeks in advance.  It makes more sense to live in a town full of opportunity and cool shit to do that’s closer to your homes and friends and families.  In a town where you won’t feel like such an outsider all the time.  For who you are and what you intend to accomplish, it is absolutely the right decision, to leave Nashville and head to Chicago.

The realization is Popeye’s spinach for a heavy heart, but even that old sailor ate a cheeseburger every once in a while, the occasional bit of comfort food that made him feel good but did nothing for his muscles.  Had to.

You spend three days going to watch friends’ rock shows and playing disc golf, working and afterward drinking beers with the few close friends you’ve made during your time living in a city in which you never quite felt that you belonged, in which you never made the mark you wanted to make, and you start to understand, well, no dickhead, you were never alone.  Not from the moment you made these friendships.

And so you remember the good stuff, how the person moving away is better than the one that first moved down.  Every feeling you experience comes on the crest of a great beach-clearing wave that scatters debris but recedes soon enough.  It reminds you of back when you were ten or eleven, when giants roamed the Earth and every emotion demanded satisfaction.

You live in a hotel.  Your bags are packed, your boxes and couches stashed at a friend’s house across town.  Your time down here is almost at its end.  Reached its conclusion.  Rising action has culminated and you’re on the abbreviated denouement through to Fin before the credits roll.

If you, dear reader, have never lived in a hotel, I can’t recommend you try out.  When home is a hotel room, you essentially are homeless, waiting on a date to come so you can leave a town that didn’t mean much until you ended up marooned on the wrong side of the airport and the remote for the thirteen-inch TV is broken after a weekend spent in the company of good friends who won’t live around the corner in three weeks’ time.

Gobble down that spinach, sailor.  Let those muscles loose.