My Baby Is Leaving.

My heart is breaking.
My youngest is going off to college in the morning, and I am in pieces.
This little girl is the light of my light, I love her more than life itself, she is simply amazing, brilliant and kind and beautiful and I just love and adore her so much, how am I going to be able to live without seeing her pretty face every day?
Without her cheerful chirping (she sings constantly from the time she gets up, as she does her chores, as she did her homework,  just that sweet soprano softly reminding me that she's there), her daily trips to get her morning iced coffee and my iced tea that started years ago with me getting them then changed to her getting them when she got her license?
Before her stomach issues were diagnosed, when it was for a long time just me and her on Sunday summer mornings, her little girl voice announcing, "Mum, it's Sunday, ice cream for breakfast" and the two of us would go to the local ice cream stand and laugh and talk and she made me fall in love with her, as she told me about her world.
My babygirl always hit every milestone way ahead of schedule, it was always taken for granted she was the smartest in her class, every teacher loved her, every one always asked how I did it, but the only thing I did was try to parent her in the ways I hadn't been, and she was always just so easy, easy baby who never cried and slept through the night from day one, easy toddler who was potty trained at not even a year and a half and who made the sales ladies laugh when this little peanut sized two year old picked out her own clothes and oohed and aahed over BabyBop tee shirts.
My angel face little girl who had so many health issues, from needing eye surgery at 9 months, to suspected failure to thrive that was just her being really tiny, a diagnosis of severe hearing loss which no one caught until she was in middle school because she was so damn smart,  to needing not one but two sets of braces and still going through teeth issues which hopefully will be resolved over the Xmas break, to stomach issues that caused her to lose so much weight she couldn't afford to lose, stomach ulcers that led to a diagnosis of severe IBS and food allergies, my little teen always excelling at school and learning to eat so she could just get to 99 pounds, never letting on just how much pain she had to have been in, surgery over last year's Xmas break to fix a mild issue that she never told anyone about, so many medical issues and she met them all the same way she meets every issue, with courage and grace and fierce intelligence and the ability to handle things that would bring an adult to her knees.
Accepting of all the crazy dysfunctional family issues, absent father, autistic twin brothers, other brother with issues, overwhelmed single mother who kept too many balls in the air and often dropped them, she was just a joy.
And after excelling in high school, she's leaving tomorrow morning for one of the best universities in the world with an amazing financial aid package and she's going to be so far away and while she's at the store, I'm yet again crying uncontrollably, looking back over the mistakes I've made as a mother, feeling selfish and childish because this is what's supposed to happen, I am so proud that she's able to do this and know she's going to excel at college and then grad school, she's worked so hard for this opportunity.
But she's going to be so far away, and the light of my life for the past almost nineteen years won't be in my life the way she was.
Trying to figure out a way to get through this, and I just don't know how.
This from someone who never even wanted to be a mother.