There are certain phrases I carry around with me all the time. Little gems that, once heard, once uttered, I knew immediately, would just stick with me forever. One of my favorites - and I can't remember for my life where I heard it, who said it, but I think my sister read it aloud from some article or book she was reading - is this:

"The lost sock is happy." 

For me, that's about as good a description of what happy is than anything I've ever heard before or since. The lost sock is happy. Damn. How true.

The very image speaks of new freedom. Of heading out alone into uncharted territories. That feeling you get as a kid when school's just ended and a long stretch of mysterious summer tingles inside you on that first warm June night. That must be something like what that lost sock is feeling.

I'd give anything to feel that way again. But it's been a long, long time since my summers seemed enticing or mysterious. 

That's why I decided that the best I could hope for was to become, for all intents and purposes, a lost sock. 

The decision to leave my husband didn't come quickly, but it must have seemed so to him. And to everyone else. For me, it was a notion that had so long nudged at the back of my brain, so long lurked in my own idea of "someday," that the final act of leaving felt almost natural and easy. I simply packed my bags, arranged to have the rest shipped to my parents in Massachusetts, and wrote a letter.

Four hours later I was on a plane bound for Ireland. And it was then I felt that little tingle in the pit of my stomach. Uncharted territories. Lost socks. Happiness.