(good)byes

I've yet to meet a human being who enjoys goodbye.

Probably has something to do with pain avoidance, a pursuit those in the developed world have mastered quite well, and those in most of the developing world would if they could, but they can't.

We generally prefer something like "see you later", yes? As someone who's begun goodbye (6 in the past 5 days to be exact), I'm learning first hand of our preference for this, or really, my preference for this.

"I'll be back" is my personal favorite. I like to say that. It's a quasi refusal to acknowledge the birthdays I'll miss, the Thanksgiving I'll spend absent at the table, the memories dear friends will make without me, as they rightly should.

But I'll be back.

And at some level, I'm right.

I will be.

It's just that chances are it won't be the same I. (Scary)

Chances are it shouldn't be the same I. (Even scarier)

I know in the deepest parts of my being that this journey should change me; that you don't see the things I'm going to see without being provoked and inspired and broken.

And there's always the possibility that the new chapter I return home with will have changed the plot completely.

Which is why it's necessary that I muster the strength to say goodbye. Not avoid it. Or reject. Or treat it with the utter disdain that comes so naturally to me. But to say it and mean it as best I know how.

Goodbye.

It's an integral part of becoming new.

And it's something strange and marvelous to know you're not who you were.

I've come to call this grace.