Saying Goodbye

When you say goodbye…there’s never enough time to say all you want to say, never the right moment to stop talking, never enough words to explain exactly how you feel.

But how do you feel?

I want to say to you that there will never be a goodbye. That this isn’t the end and we’ll see each other again and things will be normal – or not normal, per se, but good. It’s so strange to meet people after a month of break and various vacations, everyone looking a little tanner, a little taller, a little older – and talk as if nothing is going to change. But simmering underneath it all is the knowledge that we will change, things will be different, and hell, they already have. Perhaps it will be change for the better. But there is also the possibility that we will grow apart, and therein lies the fear of saying goodbye.

Seeing people for what may be the last time before we part for college…is different from other types of farewells. Because in truth, these are essentially goodbye’s for good. When we gather again, flying in from Boston, from LA, from Oregon, from San Diego, or even just driving in 20 minutes from Palo Alto, we are going to be changed from our personas of the summer. Some of us will have found passions. Some of us may have lost them. Some of us will return having backpacked through the wilderness, lived in the heart of New York, sledded down snowy lawns on kitchen trays and jumped in fountains in the dead of night. Some of us will have tried forbidden substances and liked them, some will have tried them and hated them. Bottom line is, we’re going to be different. And it’s going to show – blatantly, crudely, unashamedly – through the hastily donned summer faces that we’ll almost certainly try to fit into when we return to the place of our high school years.

So what will happen? We might meet, we might not. We might be afraid to seek each other out individually, instead opting to meet in groups, where there is at least some social insurance – there are more people to provide the juice of conversation when it seems to be running dry. But what about the juice of our personal relationships? I read somewhere that one always returns to their high school friends. To quote precisely:

“You’ll remember your high school friends the most…even more than your college friends…but high school friends separate and always come back to each other in the end of the day so don’t worry about it.”

Perhaps it is because your high school friends know how you were when you were a “stupid hormonal teenager.” If they knew you at your most irrational, most invincible, most daring – then how could they not accept you when you are older and more mature? College may be a fresh start, but your friends from high school, ah, they know your history. They know the full story. In the future, they will be the ones who know who you were before, compared to who you are now.

Maybe people return to their high school friends because they want to be teenagers again. They want to feel that reckless abandon, the energy and invincibility flowing through their veins once more, the feeling of being young and full of vitality and nerve. It’s the best and worst time of life, I think. You groan at your stupidity, but you long for those feelings again. You want to feel as if the world is your oyster, you want to feel like you can say shut up, world, I swear, I’m in love, you want to feel the rush of power when you step out the front door and the sky is an inky black. Because when you’re older, you’re allowed to do what you want. You can’t defy people anymore. And quite honestly, defiance is rather exhilarating.

A few days ago I was hit with an almost overwhelming bout of nostalgia. I lay in bed with all the lights off, staring at the blurry outline of the ceiling as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and images started flashing in front of my eyes. Images of high school. Before high school. Last week. And I knew, finally, that it was coming to a close. That this is a very, very definitive transition, and I will never experience anything like it again. That I had to say goodbye. Not “see you later,” not “til next time, then” – but goodbye.

When you say goodbye…there’s never enough time to say all you want to say, never the right moment to stop talking, never enough words to explain exactly how you feel.

What comes, will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.

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