The Dichotomy of Time

Forty-eight hours and it will all be over. Forty-eight hours until this waiting game that has lasted into the 6+ months becomes reality and ceases to be just simple speculation. The house is empty, the bags are packed, and yet the gravity of the situation simply won't seem to sink in as it should. I'm beginning to get the impression that the process of acceptance, mourning, rejoicing, or whatever one may call it, will only truly begin once I touch down in Santiago. My heart is racing, my palms are sweaty. I am filled with a thousand yards of apprehension and an overwhelming sense of calm at the same time. And I can't seem to figure out if what I should feel just now is fear, elation, or some incandescently sweet mixture of the two. I'd give anything at all to be there already, to know what lay in store and be able to brace accordingly, yet at the same time I welcome this sense of indecision as if I know that the hours, weeks, and months ahead will be so all-revealing that I will need every speck of energy to get through them. I have dreamed of this period, played out this scenario so often in my head that it already seems like a broken record, yet every thought, every fleeting emotion feels like such new territory, that I can't help but retract, retrace and rethink the entire process with every passing second. I suppose I will get there in time, but time seems so relative when it's being counted down as such.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened [...]

- T.S. Eliot

Until we meet again, my dearest Amsterdam.  Time be damned, I am sure as one could be that I will simply love you forever.