C A is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I love her. I know everyone loves their friends but I really, genuinely, truly love that girl.

She and her husband live in Inverness in a lovely house and have great jobs, him in Community Service (he works there, not actually doing community service) and her some high powered Gaelic development role.

They are amongst my favourite people in the whole entire world.

And they are going home!

They are both packing up their jobs and studying to become teachers, they are selling their house and moving back to Lewis.
It’s fantastic for them because they are going to be doing something they really want to and everything is going to work out and they are going to have fantastic careers and be so happy and it’s going to be a whole new start and I am dead chuffed for them because I want them to be happy and they both deserve it so much and I love them but to be honest, I’m a wee bit gutted.

See, me and Hubby have this long term plan. We do another couple of years south of the border then we move back up north and buy a house in Inverness overlooking the Black Isle, I have a baby, Hubby retires from the airforce and gets a fantastically paid, interesting job on civvy street and everything’s hunky dory.
Except C A won’t be there now.
She’s my comfort blanket. And she’s leaving.
And I’m such a selfish cow for even thinking that.
I phoned Hubby to tell him the news and I cried and I want to cry now whilst I’m typing this.
We were supposed to live near each other and have babies at the same time and babysit for each other and go shopping together and moan about our husbands together. I never told her I’d planned her life out for her but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind and now she’s not going to be there and all my plans are ruined.
Who’s going to go make an idiot of themselves at Yogalites with me and join the gym and never go with me and who’s going to talk about which curtains I should buy for my new house for an hour solid me and who’s going to eat cheesecake and set the world to rights with me?

But you know the worst thing. Everybody is at home now but me. My friends, my family, everybody. Except me.
Obviously I have friends that don’t live there (I do, honestly) but the ones back home, they’re the special ones. They’re the ones that know me so well, I share my past and my misspent youth with them, I’ve laughed with them, cried with them, grown up with them and I miss them all so much.
And they’re all there and I’m not.
Just knowing that is going to make it that bit harder to leave when I go back and it’s going to make me that little bit more homesick.

I am such a selfish cow, I am happy for them I’m just a wee bit sad for me.