all you have to do is close your eyes, and just reach out your hands

    At this time tomorrow, my move will be, for all intents and purposes, done. Everything that seems impossible now (you'd be horrified to see how much has yet to be packed) will have been done, by hook or by crook. What remains will be done sometime within the couple of days after—as long as I've cleared out my things and cleaned before close of business on Tuesday, I'm happy. As long as we move the furniture (the heavy, big furniture) tomorrow, that will happen with no trouble.
    The harder part will be about 24 hours from now, 48 hours from now, 72 hours from now. When the excitement, pressure, work of the day is over, when I'm dead on my feet, and I'm all alone. Alone in my blissfully quiet apartment, which seems much more like a house than an apartment, really. When I settle in to go to sleep...and I might just have some trouble with that. I might just feel too isolated, too alone.
    Six and a half years ago, when I moved into this place, I had a friend who knew (without asking, without being told) what the big move meant. That makes it sound like no one else did, which is inaccurate. But he knew how worked up I was about the little stuff, how I'd gone through months of anxiety about whether I could be alone, at all. This probably sounds impossible to some of y'all, who've known me only since then, a period in which solitude and silence are such a huge part of me. But I had to train myself to stand it, even for a little while. And the first night that I was to sleep alone in this apartment... it wasn't going to go well. It wouldn't have, I'm sure, had I not received a phone call at just the right time, from just the right person, saying just the right things. He alternately made me laugh, and challenged me, and made me talk (tell him stories), and kept me talking, until I was too sleepy to stay awake for a moment longer. And then, as I was about to fall asleep, he said 'goodnight', and that he'd talk to me tomorrow. I fell asleep knowing—not just "believing", but knowing—that he would. He got me through that night. There were others, too, but that one is unforgettable.
    I know I can get through the night tomorrow, and the next night, and the next—at least literally. But it's a different thing to want there to be someone caring about me that way, and to miss someone who's not there.

[title quotation from More than Words by Extreme]