Goodbye, Boston

Leaving Boston was harder than I anticipated.  I woke up on New Year’s Day at 5am after a fitful night of sleep and loaded up my car.  I stood in the kitchen of my amazing single woman apartment in South Boston and placed my keys on the counter.  I walked out onto my porch in the pitch black and stared out at the harbor; this porch had been a place to hang out with friends and family, read for hours, and a place of respite during the many long months I spent quarantine with my cat Benny.  I couldn’t believe I was giving this up; the reality was sinking in.

I walked back in the house with tears streaming down my face, picked Benny up, and walked through each room saying goodbye.  I kept repeating out loud “I did it.”  As a therapist starting out I spent the better part of a decade living with multiple roommates barely getting by.  I never dreamed I would get to a place in my career that I could afford my own place.  This apartment had meant everything to me.  I cried looking at the desk in my office and remembering back to March sitting there laying off 35 people on my team due to COVID; the hardest day of my professional life.  I cried closing the door for the last time and headed out to my car.

As I was driving down my street for the last time that I could call it my street I remembered a Brene Brown podcast I had listened to a few days earlier.  In the podcast she references a movie about sliding doors and different paths each person’s life can take. Through my tears I turned to Benny and repeated several times, “This is our sliding door.”