Damn, I hate it when Richard Ashcroft is right.

Today is it. Well, 4:55pm is it.

That’s when this journeyman says farewell. Farewell to a place that I now claim as my home, even though I’ve never considered any place home. Farewell to dear friends and dear foes. Farwell to all the good times and the bad. Farewell to all the fun times and the sad. Farewell to the best summer of my life.

Farewell to my reason. Farewell to the love of my life, my girlfriend, Sarah.

She is everything I never knew existed, but always wanted. Someone who is Mother Theresa-caring, but Goof Troop-silly. Someone who is as down-to-Earth as she is sexy. Someone who whole-heartidly, unconditionally loves me for me and not the pseudo-glitz and glam that sometimes comes with me. Just loves me, Kris.

And for that I cannot thank her enough.

I know I’ve mentioned her amazing-ness on this blog before, but no, my friends, it isn’t to kiss her buns just because I know she reads this sometimes. No, it is because I mean it with every ounce of me, every centimeter of me, every nano-whatever. My whole being. I love her.

She’s been so supportive of all that is going down and what will be happening in the next 60 weeks. And I’m making damn sure to make her part of every minute of it, although she’ll be 1100 miles away. Shit, that’s just a phone call and plane ride with the occasional layover.

Point being is that it feels like I’m going off to war, creative war, and damn, it is amazing to know that she’ll still be in my life in a place I never thought I could call home. That is my home. My parents are in Massachusetts and that’ll be home. But home is where the heart is as well. Call me cliché, but you’d agree if you got to hold her the way I do.

So, as I sit here next to her—her clueless that my last entry in Kansas City is completely about what I hold most dear, her—and I think about Southwest Airlines and I dancing later on this afternoon, I can’t help but think that Richard Ashcroft is right. That bastard.

It’s a bitter sweet symphony.

I love you, Sarah. Thank you.