goodbyes terrify me. i shy away from them as i would from someone with the black plague. well, not so much shy away as do a 180 turn on my heels and sprint without looking back.
i'm just so bad at them.
it's not my fault, i swear. when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all, there is some gene responsible for it. my uncle in california has never been able to take me to the airport on the day of my departure. i'd wake up to an entirely empty house - he and my aunt and cousins having already been gone for hours without my knowing - and a quickly-scribbled note with paperclipped cash explaining how they had mistakenly 'forgotten a prior engagement' and would i mind just calling a cab for myself, thanksokayloveyou.
no goodbye. the first time i was crushed, but now it is an expected ritual. we don't even say goodbye the night before or anything. everyone plays a role and pretends as though i'm not leaving. try it!! it makes things a million times easier!
i don't want to say goodbye. i'm not any 'good' at them. there is nothing 'good' about them.
recently i've realized how much of my energy goes into not doing things that i don't want to do. (read that a few times, i swear it makes sense in that twisted jess way of mine.) skirting, tiptoeing, avoiding those things that make me unhappy.
and now, i just can't bring myself to say a formal goodbye because that implies we're not going to say hello for awhile. or forever, even, if that's what the other person wants. and this is what positively wrings my heart and empties it entirely of all emotion, like droopy bubbles and tainted water drained from a sponge with a firm clutch of the fist.
i want to take off in the other direction. we all know i've never been good at confronting my fears.
things lack finality when there's no open and shut goodbye, no bookending of time. i much prefer for time to just keep going in the same direction. without looking back. pretending.
it's so much easier than starting over again.