A hotel room in Friendship, PA - 11:27pm, June 18th: When I left Los Angeles to go to college at Berkeley, 11 years ago, I was so ready. My sister had left two years earlier, and I'd never had a very good social life in high school. There wasn't much to miss, and there was a whole world, what I perceived as my new life, to look forward to.

Of course I missed my parents, but unlike when I would cry myself sick at summer camp in 6th grade, I could feel their love, support, and pride, and I was eager to do right what I did wrong in high school. I was starting over, and I was looking forward to it.

As it turned out, this is exactly what happened. It took a one year false start, with people who were my friends mostly due to proximity, before I foud my niches, the seeds that would grow into friendships, loves, and connect me to others that helped for the network of people I care about, those who make me what I am.

And now I'm leaving them.

Cue the melodrama, I know. I'm terribly excited about starting school, and I realize that the twin traumas of my very voyage out here yesterday and this morning are the devils on my shoulders, weighing me down and typing these very words, but at the same time that knowledge helps as little as the recognition of widthdrawl symptoms for what they are helps the addict deal with them.

Speaking from less than 24 hours of experience, there are parts of Pittsburgh that I really like, and if I find the right place to live, I know that I'll be centered, and will feel a lot better.

At the same time, my friends are my identity. Being a chameleon, I take on the perceived characteristics of the people that I'm with, which makes me really picky about who I spend time with. Today I joined forces apartmenting with Chad, with the idea that we might get a place to share. We spent the day looking, making a very efficient team of driver/navigator, scanning the exteriors of dozens of available spaces to narrow the search quickly. At the end of the day we still hadn't been inside a single building, which was par for the plan, but doesn't wash my anxiety. Back in my hotel room, I realized that though if I were to have a roommate, Chad would be an excellent choice, I can't have one. As a chameleon I can't live with someone else if I have any hope of accomplishing the secondary task of this one-year experiment of finding out who I am. What's more, for every moment where I saw my behavior transmuted by my roommate, I would feel trapped, and as anyone who has honestly fallen victim to a chinese finger trap, knowing you're immobilized can be a hundred times worse than the actuall immobilization. This is clearly my problem, but my own place, at least at this moment in time, is a vital part of the solution.

But this isn't the message that at 11:30 at night, after going on 3 and 4 hours of sleep last night and the night before last respectively, got me to break out the powerbook instead of the pillow. I wanted to tell people how much I care about them.

This pre-emptive farewell, nearly two months in advance is for Ali, Mark, Crystal, Ammy, Em, Mara and Karen; you've all become such a part of me that I couldn't seperate myself from you if I tried.

This is for Forest, Gina, Christyn, Rick, Gary and Chris, who in and out of the years, have woven it all together.

This is for Dinah, Benjy, Kristin and Jessica; for MJ and Ernie, who all started out as blogging friends buy have become so much more to me, and for Heather and Derek, who I hope still might.

This is for Trisha. I'll always wonder what might have been if I wasn't so slow or, paradoxically, close.

This is for Dawn and Bates, whose gentle beauty shines twain like a lighthouse with beams on either side, complimentary.

This is for Pamila, and for the radiance she brings to Berkeley just as I'm leaving.

A year is an enigmatic period. It's short enough to be short, and long enough to be long. It's a complete cycle. Everything that I could hope for could happen in a year, or everything I could fear. Will I haunt these people, an apparition using the net as my tunnel? If so, my friends at the other end would surely be the light. On paper it's too quick, in torment too long. I can only hope for the former.

Friends, I love you all, and though I know you'll still be there in a year, it's still a necessity to tell you that I hope for it so. Even when I know it's a fear given voice by sleep deprevation and unfamiliar surroundings. With any luck in the coming days, let alone the coming months, both of these imbalances will diminish, leaving only my left-coasted social imbalance, which will serve to propel me back to the place I call home when I finish this journey.

Now, to bed, for I have many things to do in the morning.