As we grow older, goodbyes seem to frequent our lives much more than when we were younger. Or perhaps they just become more real, inspire stronger reactions, or require more out of us than before. There are so many different goodbyes: goodbyes to places we love, laced with promises to return. To the places that have shaped who we are, how we act, and the lives we lived. Goodbyes include childhood homes, our colleges that became our homes, the beautiful places you were graced to call home, even if only temporarily.
There are goodbyes to people we will see the next day or the next week or the next month. Then there is goodbye that cracks like a dam holding back a flood of tears to those we don’t know when we will see again, but hope with everything we have that it will be someday soon. The last goodbyes uttered to a lost loved one. The unspoken goodbyes of those who voluntarily exit our lives, leaving behind only a cloud of confusion and a lack of closure.
I have lived a life full of goodbyes. As the child of divorced parents, I had a schedule of designated goodbyes, every other weekend was a goodbye at a rest stop in the middle of two parents, two sides of a story, two different lives. Later, I was forced to say one-sided goodbyes to the temporary people who entered my life only at their convenience. And for a long time, I resented all those goodbyes that were forced upon me. I was tired of that ache in my throat, the pit in my stomach, and the feeling of being left behind; because for me, that was all “goodbye” symbolized.
As I grew older, I came to appreciate the beauty of saying goodbye. It didn’t get easier, it didn’t hurt any less, and they weren’t less frequent. I realized that the pain in a true goodbye signified the amount of love I had poured into and received from wonderful people and places. In the past few months especially, I have said many goodbyes. I said a “see you later” to my friends and life at school while preparing to go abroad. I said an even harder “hasta próxima vez, te echaré de menos || until next time, I will miss you” to a beautiful country and even more amazing people when I left the country I lived in for four months. I shouted the millionth “see you soon” to my family as I departed for a summer internship. I whispered “I’ll miss you’s” while clasping tight the people who love me more than I love myself in a busy airport, unsure of the next time I’d see them.
Some were laced with tears and sadness, but all were drenched in gratitude for the richness of what I was saying goodbye to. There were times where I wondered if life would be easier if I had just lived a life in one place, in order to limit the goodbyes. I came to the conclusion that absolutely, it would be, but it would not be a life that I wanted to live. Leaving people and places is painful, and being left is even more painful, certainly. But those goodbyes are a blessing. They signify the end of a time or relationship that has impacted you in some manner, big or small. Every time you say goodbye to someone or some place, you are also saying goodbye to the version of yourself you were before and during the time with that person or in that place. In my eyes, every goodbye should be tinted with a little bit of a “thank you”. So, today I am grateful for painful goodbyes. I am grateful for a life lived with constant motion because that means constant growth and love. I am thankful for relationships formed near and far and the beauty they bring about. I am grateful for all of the people and places I was blessed with the ability to leave a part of my heart with. I am grateful that knowing that although some goodbyes seem more finite than others, none is entirely permanent because we carry the change they symbolize in our hearts every day for the rest of our lives.
