"How lucky I am to have known someone who was so hard to say goodbye to." -Unknown
I never thought that saying goodbye to my friends at work would be so sad. Don't get me wrong, I am no stranger to goodbyes. I have experienced the extreme pain that I often feel when I have to say goodbye to my family and friends for long periods of time. I even know what it feels like to say the ultimate goodbye to a best friend who passed away at far too young, but the truly awful part of it all is that it never ever gets easier. No matter what the severity of the goodbye is or how close you are to the person you are leaving, coping with the pain never eases up.
For instance, I have been working at my part-time retail job for almost ten months. Technically, I didn't start becoming friends with my managers and co-workers until a couple of months ago because I tend to be a shy person, and it takes me a while to warm up to people sometimes. This means that our relationships had never gotten to the point where I would see them outside of work, and we only really bonded over work related issues and events. I mean we would talk about our outside lives and discuss what we were up to when we weren't working at the store, but we never took it to the next level. So, for ten months, I bonded with these people to a certain extent. Today, I had to say goodbye to one of my managers and three of my co-workers, one of which I bonded with more than the other two. Now even though I don't feel the same amount of attachment to them as I do to my parents (for obvious reasons), I still felt really sad afterwards. Even though my everyday life isn't really going to change from not seeing them, I still am really disheartened by the prospect that I am really not going to see these people anymore. I have made connections with them. I have touched their lives and they have touched mine, no matter how small the impact may be, I will not see them anymore. I am leaving the country. And this of course brings me to think about the fact that I'm going to be leaving my family and a few friends as well due to this major move in my life. It THEN reminds me of how difficult it was when I left my best friends in college after we graduated, and how it still pains me everyday that we can't spend time together as we use to. Its a terrible, awful, vicious and unstoppable cycle.
On the other hand, saying goodbye just makes those hellos that much sweeter. After one hasn't seen a person for a while, seeing her/him again is such a happy feeling. It makes all the pain from the initial goodbye completely disappear. In some cases, like with close friends or family, one can almost pick up right where she/he left off, and it feels like she/he never said goodbye at all. I know that it may never feel that way with my work friends, but I honestly will do my very best to really keep in touch with the people that I connected with. Of course its difficult because everyone has their own crazy and busy lives to deal with, but I'd really like to think that I can make it happen this time.
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