Of all the embarrassing and awkward social interactions I’ve had during my 22 years of being alive, goodbyes are consistently the most distressing for a multitude of reasons that probably only my therapist fully understands. Part of it is that a goodbye marks the end of something, a finality, a commitment - none of which fall under the umbrella of "Things I’m Good At," an umbrella which, it should be noted, contains a very limited number of things.
The goodbye - the action itself - is awkward, sure, but the anxiety of terminality that follows is what’s really troubling. In fact, that post-goodbye anxiety alone often leads me to unintentionally avoiding goodbyes altogether. I’ve stayed in bad relationships before, simply because I didn’t have the courage to end it myself and because I feared how I'd cope without the person in my life. I didn't want responsibility for my own sadness, and I didn't want to handle the stress of making a decision like that. I’ve been broken up with plenty of times, but I’ve never broken up with someone, at least knowingly. The one time I did I just gradually stopped talking to that person day by day, essentially sabotaging the entire relationship, forcing her to make a decision. I let it fizzle out on its own via negligence. It’s cowardice, certainly, and it’s disgraceful and rude as hell - but I was a teenager and at the time; I didn’t recognize my own emotional shortcomings and how selfish that behavior was. Honestly, I still feel bad about it to this day.
Speaking of avoidance, I tend to circumvent the phrase altogether when socializing. It’s always a “see ya later” or “I’ll be seeing you.” Never, ever any cognate of “goodbye.” I’m not jumping into a pool of sharks, am I? That’s what it feels like to say it. In fact, I used the search function on my iPhone to scan all my text messages for the words “bye”, “later”, “see ya” and the dreaded “goodbye.” None were found to exist out of the tens (possibly hundreds?) of thousands of texts I’ve sent, with conversations dating back to 2014. Texting is, essentially, a constant conversation. There’s no reason to say goodbye when there’s no timetable for response anyway. Everyone is always within arm's reach, it seems. It’s probably why I tend to ignore phone calls, even from people I know. A phone call has a specified beginning and end. Yikes.
Saying goodbye to places I’ve traveled is almost worse than saying goodbye to human beings. It’s a cyclical, nostalgic thing. When I’m traveling down Route 37, headed toward IU, I can’t help but get sentimental for my home in Indy, the place I’ve spent my entire life growing up. I think about my childhood decorating the Christmas tree as snow falls outside, the lawnmower purring while my dad mows the backyard, the smell of that grass after it’s cut and my mom clapping with joy when I first learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. The same thing happens when I’m traveling up from IU toward Indianapolis. I think of the wonderful, inspiring friends I’ve made and the memorable times I’ve had in Bloomington, four years condensed into fleeting moments in the backlog of my consciousness. It all seems so ephemeral, doesn’t it? It’s hard to accept that time that has passed is time that we can’t get back again.
I hate goodbyes. I always will. But goodbyes, change, transition and tough choices are all part of being human and being alive. Because our lives are finite and death is certain, we are forced to leave people and places every once in a while, and people are forced to leave us. I won’t ever get used to saying goodbye - and I don’t think that I want to - but I’ll deal with it and get better at it. I’ve only got so much time to say goodbye, after all.
So, goodbye reader - but just for now.
