First, allow me to say this: Mom, Dad, goodbyes are hard. Dare I say, they might be impossible. Which is why this is by no means an attempt at the impossible, as I'm certainly not the type to seek failure where success is nowhere in sight. In a matter of days, we will have to say goodbye, but that is a finite farewell, one that does not seek all that a heavy word has potential to contain.

It's a word everyone uses so flippantly — goodbye. I could never be able to count the number of times I have said it over eighteen years, let alone how many instances it is used in a single day by every person. That is another impossibility that I will stray from.

No, this is not a goodbye. I'd prefer to say that this is a reflection on the past weeks, months, and years. A reflection before you drop me off at college to spend more days, weeks, and months in a small room with an uncomfortable bed. The living arrangement is not ideal, no, for if that was the case, I'd be home with you down the hall and my dog taking up the majority of my bed. That's home, and it's what I miss and crave most while I am away.

Surely it makes sense that I miss what I know best. After living in the same house with the same day-to-day routine, I would miss no longer having the usual rut. There's a security in the monotony, in the knowledge of what happens every morning, and a hope that every morning actually does mean every morning for as long as the world stays on its axis. Yes, that is wishful thinking, because it matters not to the world whether or not one person's routine is the same. If the world was a conscious being capable of having feelings and opinions of what we do, I'd think that it would want our lives to be mixed up.

I've accepted that, that the time is coming when school starts and I have another place to live, away from you. It hurts and it hurts more than I can possibly describe. The feeling of a rope drawn too taut from distance, seeking for a lax but unable to return to a coil. Because it can't, and I need to be elsewhere. Personally, I can't even begin to fathom what it must be like for you, my parents, to feel the separation I do. You were the ones that helped me walk for the first time, assured me that getting a 69 on my sophomore chemistry quiz wasn't the end of the world and that you have always and will always love me. Believe me, I can't say that I have it easy either. Leaving to try and find my own legs to walk on and wings to fly is difficult, and the world is scary.

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But the world is also beautiful. There is beauty, roads to run, and space to soar. No, this is not goodbye — for us, there will never be a goodbye. Instead, this is a thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to try and find myself in college and for supporting me in everything that I do. Thank you for the love, the texts, and Skype calls each time you seemed to know how much I needed a reminder that the world is not crumbling and that I always have a safe place. Goodbye is finite, meaning that the end has come, but thank you is infinite and will last past routines and Earth's rotation. Just as you love me so infinitely, I love you.

All I ask is that you remember it when you drop me at college with a few notebooks and t-shirts to fill the space in my heart that aches after tail lights. I wouldn't have made it this far without you.