Today, my baby sister (an exceedingly true but all-too-disarming title for me to use to her face or to anyone who has met her) is fleeing the country. If you had handed me this scenario a decade ago I would have supposed that she had somehow been led down a path of stalking Hilary Duff via the Lizzie McGuire fan club or that she had somehow become a fence for coolectibles of outdated teen dramas on network television. But, alas, she is leaving by choice. Today she embarks on a four month adventure, two weeks shy of her 20th birthday, to live in Prague and hop around Eastern Europe by plane, train, and (I can only assume) Pterodactyl. Bon Voyage.
At no point over the past 5 months (roughly the amount of time I've known she was going) was I ever looking forward to her departure. Y'know, every once in a while as she suffocated me with a hug or mumbled incoherently and demanded sound advice I thought to myself, "gee, being an only child won;t be that bad." But that's not exactly the same. And judging by the fleeting thoughts it should be fairly obvious that I was also not dreading the event. No skull and crossbones appeared on the Sept. 1 block of my calendar. I have not brewed any potions to induce a four month slumber without her. And yet, as I hugged her and implored her to make good choices (a delightful human being but her senses of humor and style always seem to trump that often more useful common sense) I felt the familiar compression of breath in my chest, the flaring of my nostrils, the burning behind my eyes and the tendency to smile away the betrayal that my hormones are about to enact. And as I stand there, barefoot in the garage, waving like an idiot, the only thing I can think to myself is "god I'm TERRIBLE at this"...and I thought I was getting good.
I have, until this late stage of development, led a life riddled with goodbyes. Every summer at sleep away camp, teen travel trips, going to school 3,000 miles from home, even studying abroad were all abvious opportunities for growth and personal development, but they all just as obviously necessitated a farewell at the end of term. And you'd think that after so many of them you'd get exhausted. You'd get more selective about the people you let in, or develop shallower relationships so it's easier to end them, but social behavior isn't quite that easy to engineer, and more often than not you end up trying to kick yourself in the teeth for bringing on this forthcoming wash of misery.
Well, boo-frickin-who. Every time I approach one of these major life changes of my own I think, "Yea, I've totally got it this time. Not goodbye. See you later. It's great. No worries. etc. etc." Fast forward 24 hours and I'm in the fetal position at an airport trying to stop crying long enough to figure out which one my gate is. It's unavoidable. I'm terrible at goodbyes. And while the list of things I'm terrible at is expansive (finding lost objects, carrying on conversations with people I don't like, crosswords) I feel like there are much worse things that could be on that list than goodbyes. Maybe being bad at goodbyes just means I'm sappy and emotional. (not new news). And maybe being bad at goodbyes means I'm at least moderately in touch with my emotions.
And what would it mean to be good at goodbyes? That I didn't care what happened to you? That I wasn't going to miss you in the inevitable periods of absence? That I could go back to being the person I was before I met you? Before you made me a better version of myself?
So I'm OK with it. I'd rather be bad at goodbyes than bad at opening wine bottles. Because let's be honest, that's what I need now.
Be safe little one! Have incredible adventures that even you don't understand in full.
xoxo gossip squirrel
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