Saturday, I rushed around a very busy All Fired Up. I felt crappy, and tired, and despite the beautiful weather, I wanted to just go home. After taking my manager back to her house (she'd bought two rugs and needed a lift so she wouldn't have to carry them on the bus), I drove back to Schuylkill House.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The house was quiet and dark. The walls were bare, there were patches on the walls where we'd filled in the holes with spackle. Boxes were strewn against the wall like a decaying palace. Things were missing.

Jon and Kelli moved out on Saturday. Jon's family drove down to help them move, and when I'd left that morning, they'd shown up and started moving things.

Andy had already moved out. Drew was gone, presumably at work. Amanda was gone. Jon and Kelli and the family nowhere to be found. I texted/called a few people to figure out where they were, and there were no answers or responses. I put my things down in my room and continued to wander.

There were spaces in the kitchen. The basement was stark and naked. I kicked off my shoes and stood in the hallway. It was so quiet.

The cats were gone. They'd been moved into the new apartment.

It was so quiet.

I went into my room and sat down on my bed.

I began to cry.

At first it was just that rush of tingling and pressure behind my nose; then the tears. But this was... I was bawling. I cried harder and stood up, walking through the dark, cool hallways, running my hands on the naked walls. And then I'd slide down the wall and onto the floor and cry, and I walked it like a ghost. They were tears of grief, and fear, and sudden absence, and sorrow, and I stood in the living room and thought of my roommates and I sitting around, Colbert Report on TV and laptops on our knees and laughing and talking and stories and capers and epic adventures and I thought of being in California, far away, and the distance multiplied exponentially in my mind, and suddenly I was moving to Saturn and I was doing it tomorrow, and by the time I had enough common sense to pick up the phone and call someone, I had moved into full fledged messy, hiccupy sobbing, and I was so upset that Anne thought that someone had died.

"S-Sarah," I sobbed, "The house is so qu-quiet. I'm... s-so afraid. I'm afraid th-that I'm going to f-fail in California and I wasn't ready for this change, and Jon and Kelli are g-gone and the cats are g-gone and I don't know where anyone else i-is and the house is so qu-quiet and I'm so stupid, I make the st-stupidest decisions," and here I broke into fresh tears and make gross wibbling noises. "I'm such a c-coward, I pretend that I can just up and leave when I c-can't, I can't leave these people, I wasn't r-ready for them to g-go, it's happening so fast..."

"Carmen..."

"I'm s-scared, Sarah. Ch-christ, I'm scared."

"Have you eaten, sweetheart? You should eat something."

"I c-can't eat, there are empty spaces in the k-kitchen, I c-can't even stand in the kitchen!"

Sarah talked to me for an hour. She murmured things that I wanted to believe, how I was brave and I wouldn't fail and everything was going to be okay and that no, I wasn't a big baby.

"You just care deeply about the people in your life. That's why you're so upset. It says a lot about you."

After we hung up, new tears came. I waited by the window like Simon used to do. Every time a car slowed down for the speed bump in front of the house, my heart raced. Surely they weren't done moving. Surely they were coming back.

Amanda strolled in from her walk two and a half hours after I'd come home. The house was dark, and I hadn't eaten, and while the tears had mostly stopped, my face was one big, puffy "I've just spent hours weeping by myself" billboard.

They came back. They came back for more things, and I practically launched myself at them, hugging and trying to seem calmer than I had in the past several hours.

Sunday morning, while glazing pottery in the solitude of AFU's back room, I thought about a lot of things. I thought about how the night before, I'd both felt deep and painful loss from just the temporary absence of two people who mean the world to me. I thought about how I'd told someone else "goodbye forever!" and wished that I meant it. I cried again, but quieter. I had to make sure my tears avoided the glaze bucket, or else it would have ruined the chemical integrity of the glaze.

Sometimes, I wish I were braver.