Michelle is leaving.
I think the first feeling I had was relief. She has never liked being here. Her job sucks, she's far away from her fiance, and she doesn't like living in the city. She does like the community, which I think was the one thing keeping her here.
I was just looking at my paper diary from the first week here. I was angry at Chris and Michelle had gone home and we were all discussing if she was really meant to be here this year. Some things never change. At the time I defended her choice to stay here. It takes some people more time to adjust. But it never happened with her. She said the only reason she was staying was to prove to certain people that she could do it. She knew down to the day how many days we had left, and we don't leave until August.
I suspected that she might change her mind once she came back from her Christmas vacation. She used all her vacation time to go home then, and I thought she wouldn't be able to stand eight months not going home. Now she can be at home with her family, and she is such a rock to them, and be with her Chris. It will be so much easier for her to plan her wedding now. She was saying she wouldn't expect any of us to come to her wedding now, since she was leaving early. I don't know about everybody, but I'm going to be there. She would have been part of the community if she had left after the first week. I'll miss her a lot, but I know she's going to be so much happier being in Illinois.
Once she leaves, there will be five bedrooms and five people, so of course everyone asked if I wanted Michelle's room. And the crazy thing is-I don't. This summer, I was so determined to get my own room, but I enjoy living with Emily too much. And yeah, I'll just be across the hall from her, but it wouldn't be the same. We wouldn't have our late-night conversations when we're both in bed and should be asleep. And we both have the same lax attitude toward cleanliness.
I thought that maybe Chris might want to move up from the basement so he could be closer to all of us, but he says he doesn't want to move his stuff. He does want her loveseat, but the women want to keep it because we always congregate in Michelle's room, even when she's not there, and it will be a guestroom/lounge area when she's gone. The downstairs is pretty much taken over by the television. It distracts me when it's on even when I'm in the dining room.
