Saying Goodbye...or until next time

Like most people, saying goodbye to someone is extremely hard for me to do. From a young age, I was quickly accustomed to pain of someone leaving the every day business of my life. Some of them I was prepared for them to go before the time came, others it came so quickly that there was no time to give that final hug, to say those final words you hope they would take with them. I learned early, early on how to handle someone possibly (or definitely, as in some cases) never being in my life again.

Some people take it decently well. They have the right words to say, and when the time comes, they are ::sigh:: ready. Others are extremely dramatic. Tears, pleadings, etc. I handle goodbyes by just cutting myself off. I almost compartmentalize their leaving. "Okay. They are leaving. ::out box::" I am a quiet goodbyer. As a student, on the last day of school I used to walk the hall ways and let the memories flow of the previous year, or years if it was a school I was leaving. I always wanted to be the last person a teacher saw on the last day of school. When I left for college, I was a little more prepared to say goodbye, but I felt that most things wouldn't change. I would still have my best friends. As I left college, though, I knew better. Relationships were never going to be the same. We all were closing those chapters. So I developed my soft way of saying goodbye. I would just say my peace and then back off to deal with it on my own. And it isn't always the best way to handle things.

Just recently a very, very good friend of mine moved. I have had other friends move away, but when K announced she was leaving, my heart broke. I'm a quirky girl (mostly at heart now), and she is one of the few people in this world who not only accepts that I'm not girly, girly, but she encourages my creativity and loves me for what I try to offer the world. She is one of the few people who doesn't take offense to what I say, and I think it's because she knows that I tend to have foot-in-mouth disease, and I don't ever really mean to hurt someone. K was and is one of those few friends who come in my life that really just makes me feel like I can be me. And then she moved.

After two years of really developing such a great friendship with this young lady, in her final days here in Charleston, I mucked things up by pushing her away. I said my bit in my own way, cried silently as I wrote a goodbye card, cried all over her shoulder Sunday morning as the church prayed for their moving, and then backed off. I had an opportunity to say a personal goodbye to her and her lovely boys and didn't take the chance. I just knew that I couldn't get through it without crying again. And I'm an ugly crier.

So with that all being said, K, I will miss you. I will miss your friendship, your creativity, your encouragement (where were you tonight at Waist Up/Waist Down class?! She about killed me!!), and your gentle way of telling me I am in the wrong. Don't think you are getting rid of me. I am already planning a trip this summer to see you. And I don't like Florida. Or the heat. But I love you. :) So I will see you then!

And for the rest of you who I have ever said goodbye to, please know that I'm not trying to be a jerk when I don't say goodbye. I just really stink at them.