Staging...

Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, theorized that if you take a rocket and add another rocket underneath it, you could double it's range... if you added yet another rocket, you could triple it's range. This is called "Staging". The greatest example of staging is the absolutely beautiful Saturn V launch vehicle used to take the Apollo program to the moon.

When a stage's fuel is expended, it is ejected and the rocket's paths diverge... usually the stage that is ejected is left to slowly lose its orbital dynamic and fall back into the atmosphere. This rocket has served its purpose, and will now be nothing more than a memory, just part of the history that makes up that launch.

I feel that my life has just "Staged", just a scant few days ago I watched as the Colorado mountains receded in the early morning light. I saw them vanish over the horizon, leaving behind so much of my life.

The feeling is awful.

I left behind my friends and my cats. All of whom are in great hands, and none of whom are likely to forget me anytime soon. I won't lose them and they won't lose me.

But my life as it was--From the watching of Battlestar on Friday nights to the Comic Book Meeting, to the playing of Heroscape- is forever ejected, destined to burn itself up in the atmosphere. I may do any of those things again, but that will be in a completely new stage. This one is gone... drifting farther from me as I am boosted into an ever-higher orbit.

All of it was important -vital even- to my life and who I am... but it's done, it propelled me into my current orbit, where I can now fly...
...and I can see from here that my new orbit is huge, wonderful and very, very terrifying.