Goodbyes are not Forever

There is no perfect way to execute a goodbye. There is the lightness and the familiarity that we all want, the feeling that even its final moments, a relationship is still just as fun as it always was. Because when we are saying goodbye to someone, we’re not just talking to them, we’re talking to the person that we are at this very moment. We know, even if we don’t want to admit it, that we will never be in this exact same spot again. We will never see the world the same way, and closing the door on someone’s chapter means committing it officially to memory, that it’s no longer an organic, living thing.

“If nothing ever changes,” we think, without even really thinking it, “then maybe we can be young forever.”

I think that we'll say a hundred goodbyes, sometimes forcing myself to go back and add one last thought before the every person walk out. I told certain people what I’ve always thought of them, told them that I believed in them, told them that they were good at that thing they’ve always considered just a hobby. Goodbyes are a certain brush with mortality, the feeling of time running out that leads you to say every thing you’ve ever considered too uncomfortably honest. There were people I’ve known for months who only in that moment heard what I truly felt for them with no filter, and all I regretted was not having told them before.

There are people we will never be able to say goodbye to, even if we have to leave. They are the ones we will make every last effort to stay close to, the people we will text and call and Facebook and Slack with in the early morning hours to accommodate shifting schedule discrepancies. They are the loves that can’t be tempered by distance or time, and the goodbyes you force yourselves to say are really just an “I’ll see you soon,” even if they make your chest hurt in the moment. Even when you are about to leave, you imagine that you’ll see them just one more time, even if it’s just get together or "inuman".

When the account is over, I wonder how many of these people I would really never see again. And while I knew, on some level, that many of the goodbyes I had said were permanent ones, I thought it better to assume that I would see all of them again some day, even in the same room. It seemed a better way to live life, imagining that your next reunion is just around the corner, and that your story will never have to come to a real ending.