I'm done, you know? Well, not completely done, because The Next Chapter is always there until we die, and maybe even after that. But it's nice to have some moment where, should anything actually happen in your life, it's not happening in the middle of something else, or several other something elses, which is more likely the case.

You know, let's just say that the family entanglements are a given, but something we won't count ... they're a given because, even if we've vowed never to speak to any of them ever again, everyone had to come from some sort of a family at some poing. And we'll say they don't count, exactly because that's something you can't escape from, no matter how far you run. Whatever the particular circumstances of our coming into self awareness in the world, the process itself must leave an indelible impression.

But, I'm saying like that's really only Chapter One. Or, supposing you've had a very eventful young life, maybe it was Chapters One through Twenty. Regardless, time marches on, life moves ahead, and Things Change. Now generally speaking, these changes come so many and with such variation of intensity and speed that it's pretty hard to keep exact track of them all. Thus, our stories are always overlapping ... the you that's still getting over one person is the one that's falling for another, or the self that misses home is also the self that hates the new job that also loves the new city...

The relationships, especially, are what complicate matters. With each person who means anything in your life or to whom you mean anything, there is a Story of Us going on at any given moment. And again, unless these stories actually manage to intermesh somehow, they're instead just laid sloppily one over the other.

So that's what I'm feeling a relief from. Not being in the middle of anything. Not having tales that call for resolution, or even more exposition.

Being as done as you can be, when you potentially still have 3/4 a century stretched out ahead of you waiting for you to fill it.