Remembering what will be...

Transitional periods are really sorta scarry 'ya know. The time that comes before the doing, where coming and going hasn't happened and what will happen is up in the air. I don't avoid transition, it's the natural progression and all, I just don't go rushing into it with open arms. I'm leary of the new as much as I'm excited by the endless possibilites it presents. I handle it akwardly enough, seeking to prolong the period of transition when the prolonging is itself what I'm really trying to avoid. For instance, I got my new phone today, it's fantastic. I love the newness, the fact that it actually works and all the learning that I've go to do in order to operate it. Yet part of me knows I'll miss the old one, regardless of how much crap I've suffered through with it. It took a bit before I switched out the chips and powered the new phone on. Even now, the old one sits on the table, ready to (not) work. I pass by it with a mixture of relief and sorrow. I wanted this new one and I am ready to move on, but the whole transition sorta makes me uncomfortable. It's an ending within a new begining. A goodbye disguised as a hello. A loss that results in a greater fullfillment. I know all this and yet I still have an ingrained aversion to it. And this is only a cell phone. Imagine me after a break-up or a death. I just don't like endings. I prefer for things to run parallell to one another, not begining to end with each other. But that's how life is, a giant trade off. Adulthood in place of childhood, marriage in place of dating, father in place of son. I'm always content afterwards, when the transition has run its course. That period though, man it's tough.
Two of my good friends find themselves in that transitioning position right now and I'm just really gratefull that I am not there myself. I'll be the rooted stable one for now. One of them is nearing the end of a rental term, after which the house he lives in is being sold. At the same time that he's being evicted he is ending his last month of state-mandated relocation prohibitation (probation in laymans terms...). He's got friends living out of state he'd love to visit and it just seems to be too much of a coincindence that everything works togther time-wise like this. He's looking to move (somewhere) in a month, and his life has become one big ball of transition. Paperwork, deadlines, jobs and housing all at once. When it all sorts out it will be completely new and completely different. And he'll be glad to be there (I hope...), and glad he's settled. Now though, he's all nerves and questions and rightfully so. Good luck Uncle Z nutts, you can't quit now. I'll always rep you though.
My other friend is finishing his year at school, looking to come back home for the summer. He needs to find a job, needs a place to stay, needs a bit of release from the usual answers to those problems. The old highschool job is tough to go back to year after year. But paying for tuition is an even tougher task, one that doesn't care where the funds come from. And staying with mom and dad one more summer is difficult when independence is a lifestyle and not a privilage. He is trying to bridge that gap between dependent and independent, and that is its very own can of worms. We've all either been there or will be there. It's dang tough boy, but you'll suck it up and plow through. You always do.
So, here I am feeling out of sorts, observing the transitions in others and not in myself. I'm just as powerless in other peoples lifes as I am in my own and I'd just screw things up if I could anyway. There's no big mystery being unravelled here, no profound summation of hidden workings. I'm just worried about my friends and sitting in empathy with them. I'll be right here for them, as long as they let me, or until my next transition moves me away...