moving and breathing

This is how it works.
You're young until you're not.
You love until you don't.
You try until you can't.
You laugh until you cry.
You cry until you laugh.
And everyone must breathe
until their dying breath.

~Regina Spektor

Next week I will start the first of many trips out of the bear river valley, my car filled with boxes of things I once thought were important. It will be hard to leave such beauty.

Last winter the little schoolhouse Squirrel and I share began to fall apart and has continued to over the last ten months. Water lines were constantly broken. Fences, gates and steps rotted and disintegrated. Pipes leaked, appliances stopped working and the shingles came off the roof one by one.

Squirrel and my relationship began to erode along with the house, and though we tried the best we could, neither one of us has been able to make the necessary repairs. We will no longer be living together.

I find myself without anger or accusations or blame, only with a deep sadness and a grief for a dream that has died, along with an anxiousness that always comes from a future uncertain.

At the end of every day now I make my way home to a funky little cabin made of recycled windows and abandoned wood. I sit on the floor, talk to the resident spider, shed more than a few tears, eat Greek yogurt and sleep in a tiny loft that makes me feel like a fat little bird hiding from predators.

And for the first time in a very long while I can breathe again.