i have become comfortably numb...

oh
holy
shit!

seriously
holy
shit!

all of a sudden our departure date is rapidly whizzing up on me. i feel a bit like the subject of a dolly zoom in a crappy b-list horror movie. from being a distant date in the fuzzy future, the fact of what the husband and i are about to do has miraculously clicked into very sharp focus. i leave my job in 4 working days. we move the majority of our posessions into storage in 10 days. we fly out of the country in 23 days. actually, not quite 23 because our flight takes off in the early morning.
so closer to 22 and a third.

the mere fact that i can refer to these future dates as being days away rather than weeks or months is by turns exhilirating, exciting and terrifying, but i'm mainly finding it numbing.
on occasion i find myself looking round the office i've been working at for the past 3 and a half years, and the thought that i won't be sat at my desk this time next week, and then probably never again in this building, just doesn't feel real- that is what i mean by numbing. i'm trotting through these last few days, and people keep asking me when i'm leaving, and im answering dutifully with a sparkle in my eye, and they are saying they are super jealous, and im smiling smugly, but when it comes down to it i cant quite believe my own words.

the concept that we are actually leaving london, walking away from this amazing metropolis, forever (which is, yes, using artistic licence because we will be flying into heathrow on our return.... and we have so many friends and family in and around the city that we fully intend on spending vast swathes of time visiting and camping on their various sofas....but give me artistic licence- i'm being wistful!) is just very difficult to get my head around.

at times i love this city, and at times i hate it. i'm sure that we are making the right decision to leave now, because i am finding myself hating more things than i'm loving, and i don't want that to be my lasting memory of my relationship with this place. but at the same time, rather like a big brother that winds you up on a regular basis, i still have huge fondness for it. i fell in love here, i learned to stand on my own two feet here, i honed many a life skill here and i truly grew up here.
london has become my comfort zone- this place, and its often rude and unpleasant inhabitants, i know and i understand. i am one of them. i walk swiftly down the left side of escalators whatever place i'm in now, and i rarely hold the handrail. i tut at people who walk slowly on the street. i want to be able to go clothes shopping at 7pm if the mood takes me. and i fully expect to have my order understood and a hot drink in my hands within 1 minute when i ask for a wet hot chai latte with soya. you can plonk a drunken me in almost any place (though i'd obviously always rather be plonked north of the river!) and i could find my way home on public transport, like a squiffy homing pigeon.

when i first moved to london this place scared me. now, to be honest, i'm a little bit scared of the big wide world outside it.
so i dont know if this is denial or fear, or just a lack of imagination, but the reality of this big trip of ours has definitely still not quite hit home.
and where exactly will 'home' be in 22 and 1/3 days?