Please Don’t Leave Without Saying Goodbye

I have moved away from a lot of people without saying goodbye. It’s one of those odd things that somehow became normal when my dad was in the military. People were always moving somewhere else and there was no way you could possibly say goodbye to everyone. Sometimes you just avoided it on purpose.

One of the causes of my transient nature, I guess. I moved quite a bit even after I didn’t have to move anymore and continued the pattern of not saying goodbye. It’s a lot easier to leave and move on. No crying. No promising to write every day. This was of course pre FaceBook and pre email and pre all of the wonderful things we have nowadays. (I know. I’m old as dirt.) Many friends that I have met and have been close to, never even knew my last name. Good for the ones that you don’t want to find you on Facebook. Good if you have a warrant out for your arrest. Good for a handful of not really good reasons.

When I moved here though I promised myself that things would be different. I would not uproot my child on any little whim and drag her around the country. I would not take her away from her friends and family. I would not force her to decide whether or not a broken heart caused by saying goodbye-

would hurt less than wishing you had just one more chance for the rest of your life.

It’s one thing when your job makes you do these things. It’s quite another when you just decide by eenie meenie miney moe that you want to live in Texas, for instance.

Still, I get frazzled in the brain occasionally. I rant that I’m getting the hell out of Hillbillyville. Sometimes I think I’d like to hide out in the woods for a while and grow a ratty old beard and eat crickets. Occasionally I don’t care what happens because sometimes…anything is better than trying to conform to this. The grass is always greener everywhere but wherever here is.

Please don’t leave without saying goodbye, via text message from my sister in reply to one of my rants. And I cried all over my crappy old iPhone.

Sometimes, we don’t realize how much our actions affect those around us.

But when we do, we owe it to ourselves and the ones that care about us to do better.

To at least give back enough to say goodbye before leaving.

Or even better, never leave. When you think of it like that, then suddenly here isn’t so bad.