It was 11:30PM when I wrote this in the backseat of my parents’ car, being whisked back to Long Island, hoping to catch a little sleep before the LA trek. Normally, I’d be too excited to get an ounce of sleep, but I’d run myself so ragged that I went into a coma that nearly made me miss my flight.

The last two weeks were crazy, trying to see every friend, every family member, and make every moment count. My Dad told me to look around and take my last look at Manhattan for what could be a long time. But after soaking in everything that made my life in NY great and spending days packing and compartmentalizing my life, I don’t think I can appreciate a last look anymore. I don’t see any of this as a goodbye. It’s an abrupt break with my personal universe, and I don’t think any birthday party, going away party, or amount of time could amount to a good enough bon voyage.

I haven’t updated much recently, and the trend will continue for a few weeks more until we find a place to live in LA. But something happened tonight that I wanted to share.

After spending every waking hour packing for the last week, getting barely any sleep, Jena and I finally loaded up a moving truck and cleaned out our apartment. It was exhausting, but more than that, it felt like a gut punch. This was the place we called home for over two years, and now it’s just this blank space with none of the personality we gave it. It felt like a piece of ourselves stripped bare. A safe zone where we could no longer take refuge. Drained of energy and morale, we went out to dinner with our parents, struggling to stay awake.

Earlier in the week, I asked Erica, the photographer of our wedding, if she could get us the wedding pictures by that night. Jena had mentioned it would mean a lot to her to be able to share seeing the pictures with her family, and I wanted to do something for her before we left, especially in view of all the hard work she’d put towards making my birthday a special one. Anyway, it was a pretty impromptu request, but Erica said she would try to get them to me by the last night we’d be with our parents.

The whole night I struggled to keep people from leaving. I actually lied about when Erica said she’d get the photos to us (she actually said between 10PM-11PM, not 10PM. Sorry. Womp womp). We stormed from Starbucks to Starbucks, refreshing and reloading the site, hoping it would update. As it turned from 9 to 10 to 11, our parents started losing faith. They were tired and wanted to go home. Even Jena started losing faith, and we had to start saying our goodbyes. But at the very end of our tear-filled departure, I hit reload one last time and –

BA-BOOM!!

I share this story because Jena and I are saying goodbye to an old way of life and taking a chance on something abstract. We are reaching out for an incredible victory based on a promise that we made to ourselves, and we plan to push ourselves as far as we can go to achieve it. But it will take time. It will take every fiber of our being to keeping going. But we can’t give up, even at the eleventh hour. We have to push, for ourselves and for every person, friends and family, who believed. Because we’re holding out for something that important to us. Because in that moment, when you reach victory and you can share it with the people you love…

Goddamn it feels great.

See you all later.