wave goodbye

I'm writing today because I haven't in too long, much too long, hours and hours too long, and I'm torn up about it. I feel incomplete.

Lately I've been worried about the ramifications of my leaving for over three months this summer, to a place where I likely won't be able to call my people, my guy and my biff, my family, and will rely heavily on email (hopefully gchat) and the fact that almost everyone can get to the internet via their cell phones.

Yesterday one of my friends said that leaving is better than being left, and although it seems to make good logical sense at first blush, in reality, I don't necessarily think it's automatically so. The last time I left the country for three months - to travel around Central America when I was 18 - it's true, I did feel a sense of power and detachment from the ones I left, especially a certain someone with whom my relationship was deteriorating. At the same time, and I think this phenomenon is rather common based on my conversations with others who have traveled for reasonably long periods of time: when you're the leaver, you tend to have someone, perhaps more than one, a person on whom you focus and rely on for your connection to your old life. In my previous experience, the person who became it for me wasn't prepared to handle that task; and to be honest, as someone who was recently this 'point person' for a friend who left for a while, it isn't easy. It can be begrudging, it can seem like a burden, because not only do you feel obligated to communicate with them whenever they make the time, but there's the added element of having to plug up their loneliness and sense of disconnection with your own emotional energy. Does that make sense? My point is, although it seems easy to think that the ones being left have a harder time of it, and in one sense that's very true, I think people don't appreciate the plight of the one who's left, the overwhelming feelings of sadness and guilt; fear about those they've left replacing them, or detaching from them, to handle their own sadness; being resented for seemingly abandoning the people at home, and their related realization that perhaps you weren't as close as they thought. After all, you did leave for three months! You can't care about us too much!

It's not true. I'm scared, and as the date of my departure from my city and my beau and my friends creeps closer, I feel more desperate to cement the attachments I have here. I feel on the verge of losing everything I've built, my close friendships and an absolutely stellar relationship with the person I want to spend all my life next to (near you always). It seems like I'm powerless to stop whatever distance will naturally result from my absence; I guess what I can't handle is thinking that it will never be surmountable, even after my return. I worry the feeling that lingers with those I've left can never fully dissipate; mistrust and a reluctance to be close will forever poison their feelings about me, like a residue on our interactions, or the slightest taste of onions on pancakes (oddly enough, this happened to me at a restaurant, and I thought for the longest time I was crazy until I lifted the stack up and found fresh, sliced onion underneath. Really gross.)

I know it will be worth it. I think it will. The thing is, that balance changes depending on what I lose back home. What if I don't return to my love? What if my biff has a new biff? That seems to change the calculation, and itself might condemn the memories of my trip, my hasty decision to apply and forego any other opportunities here, to my well-established and reinforced box of regret. Might it be a cleansing, though? Perhaps I'm doing nothing more than separating the wheat from the chaff, which would (with any good karma) happen, regardless, before commitments were made and years were wasted, opportunities were passed up and the regret box grew even larger. Perhaps in an even more difficult circumstance, after dependence and unhealthy attachment fester and rot the relationship.

All I have is maybes. And hopes. I hope they still love me when I'm gone, and when I return; I hope there's no resentment, or anger, for me leaving; I hope it fortifies our connection, rather than kinks it.

I miss you already, you and you and you, I miss our things and our talks and our bodies and nights and fun and you. I hope I don't get left as a product of my leaving. I'm just taking a temporary hiatus in order to pursue one of my great dreams; my wish is that there are no permanent rifts because of this. Note it! And I'm sorry. All I know is, all I know is that I love you, yes, I love you. You fill my half empty cup.

I want to feel like this, carefree, happy and light, sure both in my choice, and in my people at home. Things are going to be okay. Nothing that bad will happen.


Instead, I feel alone, waving goodbye to a home that I'm leaving, and which might soon leave me too in pursuit of its own great dreams.


So I must wave goodbye, wave goodbye, wave goodbye, wave goodbye. Manhattan Skyline, by Kings of Convenience.