So this is what it feels to be heartbroken. I had no idea.

These last few nights have come and gone without my getting much-needed sleep. I lay awake, restless and fidgety, not able to think about important things like when I need to be at work the next day, or what else I have to pack away for my journey to my new home in Colorado; instead, my thoughts flow outward and never come back, leaving me with a buzzing in my head and more confusion than I started with. After enough time sweating under my three blankets and stained yellow comforter, I get out of bed, slip on my dirty moccasins and a ratty sweatshirt, and descend the stairs from my room out onto the front porch. Every time I claim it's because I think the fresh air will help settle me and let me sleep, but I just need a cigarette and some time swinging on the porch swing to calm my frayed nerves.

I've only come to one conclusion in the 45+ hours I've spent thinking: Where I am right now, presently, with myself and my direction of thought, is exactly where I'm supposed to be. It's an oddly comforting notion; The idea that finally, I'm not living in my past or attempting to catch up with my future. I'm simply living. Granted, my emotions are all over the place and I have this deep, aching, burning hole in the pit of my stomach that seems to be directly connected to the tear ducts in my eyes, and I haven't been able to cough up the lump that's permanently lodged in my throat, but it doesn't really matter, not really, because I still feel something. I'm feeling something that isn't necessarily a new brand of emotions, but for the first time since I turned 15, what I'm feeling feels real. It's not fabricated, imagined, expected, or completely false. It's a real thing; Painful, but tangible.

I'm not lost, per se. Maybe only in the way that I don't know what direction I'm supposed to be headed in the near future, and maybe in the way that I don't know what else I'm supposed think or feel or physically do with myself in order to make my time here on Earth worth it...but no one really knows the answers to those dilemmas. My mind is centered, finally. It may be centered in a swirling vortex of unutterable chaos, but it's centered. And I know that what I'm thinking and what I'm going through is perfect; perfect in the way that it's happening now, and not in some twisted past memory or unimaginable future. And presently, that's exactly where I want to be.