Change feels like death because it is

On Saturday morning I'm driving outta the state I've lived nearly 30 years with a truck full of stuff and one orange cat. People keep asking me how I'm feeling. I have days where I have a lot of feelings, and days where I'm too drained from Taking Care Of Things to access my feelings. Then I feel bad for not having access to my feelings at moments when I am sitting across from someone I will miss very much, who I know I will miss very much, but who I can't feel the imminent absence of because it's still not happening Yet.

At other times, I just feel insane with greed for more time. For all that I'm inflicting this on myself, for the best possible reasons, I am greedy.

Yesterday, one of my closest friends tattooed the outlined of the Great Lakes on my back, moving from west to east. From Wisconsin to New York. Wisconsin sits behind my heart, and together with an older piece, I have Wisconsin shapes cradling two sides of my left lung.

And then there's the spot where the Mackinac Bridge, three different lakes, a hoard of intersections all converge at my spine, which hurt the most of the whole process. It also happened to be the boundary between Superior/Michigan and everything else. Those first two lakes I know. Intimately. Summers on Lake Michigan at my grandfather's house, perched on the flat shore rocks reading or watching the sunset. The bay where I cut my foot and needed stitches and my mother carried me dripping down the beach. The first picture of an endless vastness I would later understand was just child's play compared to the ocean.

And Superior, my second great love, iceburged in April and desolate. Flooded with tourists in July. The place I have been most myself, that lone woman driving her red Honda, stopping when she feels like it, camera in hand at every thunderstorm and overlook.

And ahead, there's Huron, Erie, Ontario. Places I know, but more vaguely. Shores I have stared from, but only once, years ago. Places that don't - yet - feel part of my world.

Pain is at the boundaries. Between land and water. Between skin and air. Known and unknown. The moment when you put the truck into gear and tilt down the hill toward the highway, slowly at first and then with gathering speed.