Sayonara, and peace out.

I've always had problems saying goodbye.  It's always "see you later" or "talk to you soon".  Sometimes, I say it in a foreign language.  Au revoir!  Ciao!  Hasta luego!  If that doesn't work, "byebye" or "miss ya" may fill in.  But very rarely do I say the word "goodbye" as such.  It seems so formal, so definite.

Goodbye has always scared me.

It's not like I thought that speaking the words would make any separation permanent.  I knew words don't hold any magical powers to be released when spoken.  It just never feels right.

It wasn't just speaking them either.  Just the thought of goodbye intimidated me.  Saying goodbye to someone - admitting that you may not talk to them for a long time and possibly never speak to them again - was frightening.



I'm going to let you in on a little secret that you have probably already figured out about me.  I don't make friends easily.  I'm afraid to let people in.  Those I do let in, I expect to be around for a long time.  I'm awkward and bizarre and apparently pretentious (though I swear I don't mean to be!).  I have a tendency to correct people and to be right (again, I don't mean to be, and I hate making people feel bad), and I have a lot of quirks that many people may not find particularly attractive, friendly, or approachable.  So the people that are an important part of my life tend to stay as such.  The fear of saying goodbye to any of the few people that I have let in past my congenial outer shell, to see the real me underneath, has meant that I've kept a lot of people around in my life longer than they deserved.  And probably longer than was healthy for me.

A few months ago, though, I went through a lot of life changes simultaneously.  I now write in a room more than 500 miles from home.  I have a new job, a new apartment, a new school, and a whole new place in life.  Going through these changes, I had to leave behind a lot of people that I wanted to pack up and bring with me.  And I didn't say goodbye to them.  I found another way to part.  Most of them didn't need a goodbye anyway.  Most of them have remained just as important to me as they were before I left.  Some of them, I dare say, have become even more important to me since I moved.  Those were the ones that I now know will always be a part of my life, and I am excited to see where our friendships lead.

Distance and change can have the opposite effect as well, and in the past 2 months, I have effectively removed a couple of people from my life.  They very quickly proved to me that our friendship wasn't important anymore, and that my relocation was an inconvenience to them.  Well, fuck you too.  I finally decided that, if I am going to change every other part of my life, I can change who comes with me as well.

Coincidentally, the two people that I have consciously removed from my life were both people that I had met as soon as I moved to Kansas City way back when.  They were both very selfish, spoiled, and needy.  For some reason, I tend to attract this.  Maybe it's because I'm nurturing…maybe it's because I'm weak.  I'm not sure.  In leaving Kansas City and changing every other aspect of my life, I decided that it was finally time to cut some ties that had been holding me down for years.  One of the two got a very understated goodbye, in the form of a defriending.  A coward's move?  Maybe.  But it was the easiest way to handle it.  It was a goodbye that didn't even need to be spoken - the implication was clear enough.  The other got a slightly more actual goodbye, in the form of a letter explaining that I would no longer be treated like garbage and berated when all I was doing was trying to help.

The thought of suddenly losing two people who I had actually let get to know me and see me as I really am scared me deeply.  I wondered for quite a while if I could function without knowing they were around.  This is twisted, as neither was there for me when I truly needed them (there are perhaps a couple of exceptions to this, but the point stands), but I was afraid of losing any possible support system for fear of never regaining another.

In the time since I've stopped speaking to them, though, I've realized that I honestly do not miss them.  The conversations, the texts, the constant trying to fix the problems they brought to me,  them refusing to listen when I needed to vent.  I don't miss the daily interaction.  I don't miss the stress they both constantly added to my life.  They may not have gotten formal goodbyes, but today I am comfortable saying good riddance.

I'm learning that goodbye doesn't have to be the end of things.  Goodbye doesn't mean you will never see or speak to someone again.  It's not something to be feared or avoided.  Goodbye doesn't always have to be spoken outright, and it doesn't always have to be final - but sometimes it's really good when it is.

18.11.12  11:26 pm