horrible awful no-good very bad day

today was a very very horrible day. horrible horrible horrible. it was graduation day at IWU.

my friends are all now grown-ups. any time now christy and cromer are taking off for eurasia to missionarify the "Karis" people. meredith is spending the night in marion with her 17 family members (they went to a big dinner in kokomo tonight -- i had to say goodbye to her at 4ish).

matt and cromer will be working at a camp in virginia. meredith will be working at Camp Tara Holy Cross again in Vermont. tim will be all over the place.

josiah and karissa get married may 21.

dignal will show up on my doorstep may 12 and then in the morning the 13th (6:30 am) i take her to the airport and she'll fly out to SD, CA to work at Indian Hills Camp this summer.


i was dealing ok as long as there was still something left to do: "the last hurrah" night, meet at SHE house, attend graduation, checkout (which was a major ordeal), pack car, call dad for help (didnt have room for it all), open house at the guy's townhouse from 2-4...

i'd come close to crying a couple times, thinking about the goodbyes that were ahead.

and then 3 o'clock hit, and i couldn't hold back any longer.

dignal, christy, meredith, and i stood in the parking lot between evans and TH452 and cried. it took about 20 minutes for christy to say goodbye to us, and dignal to say goodbye to us. then dignal left for home and christy went to finish cleaning. mere and i headed for our cars to say goodbye to our boys.

my car wouldn't start.

so i just walked over there. sat on the staircase and cried. and cried. and cried. (i'm sorry i stole your toilet paper, tim). meredith and i basically just pretended for about an hour that we weren't saying goodbye, that we both weren't coming back, that it's The End. nick showed up with jumper cables and he and cromer took off to fix my car.

meredith said goodbye to everyone but matt and i, and asked us to go over to her car (there was still something of an open house going on). matt, being matt, started throwing a frisbee around while meredith and i stood by her car.

....edit: ending....
meredith and i pretty much just stood there and cried for awhile, not really looking at each other. at one point she said "a hug really isn't enough." to which i made an especially great reply, which i don't think she'd allow me to put here, to which she exclaimed, "I WAS TALKING ABOUT YOU!" awww.

after a bit matt came on over, and he and meredith said goodbye. i stood by her car and cried a bit, and looked at all her stuff packed up, and hated...whatever....i could.

then she hugged me. i think i'd stopped crying at that point. i was past crying. no more tears. they were all gone. she said goodbye again to the rest of the people standing around, and got in her car, and drove away. i took pictures. i think 6 or 7. of meredith driving out of my life.

it's going to be a great photo montage on here as soon as i get them developed.

and then i went to the art building to see if it was unlocked (locked)....so now i got prof kwok's sewing machine. gotta find a time to take it up there.

and i said goodbye to everyone too. later, i'm leaving. sniffle.

i drove away.

down 37. it took awhile for me to stop crying. surprisingly enough, the fact that i'd only slept 4-5 hours in the past 48 didn't seem to affect me. and the tears actually cleared up my contacts nicely -- they've never worked so great. by about elwood i think i was almost over the crying stage (every now and then i'd think something and tear back up). finally i had reached the "80s music" stage of drive home/get over life process, but alas, i had no 80s music. i had to settle for outkast's "hey ya" and a voice mail for jon.

my mom called during the crying stage, and we both cried on the phone a little.

and then when i got home dad and i sat around for a bit, called caryn to see what she wanted to do for dinner (she wasn't answering) so we went out. longhorn steakhouse had an hour wait, so did kuna grill (whatever that is, it's in clay terrace, the new outdoor mall), but bd's mongolian barbecue was no wait. rather slow, in fact. so we went there. always an experience.

and then i came home and fell asleep on the couch. the end to the horrible awful no-good very bad day.



ps. add DieMeredithDie to your buddy list, coz LaGatita0007 wasnt working, so...justincase.