Aloha: It means hello and goodbye

I hate that nothing ever lasts. Nothing. Living in the moment seems impossible because in your next breath, next blink, it's all over. A milestone, a holiday, a vacation, an important event, a project, friends, family, pets, lovers, jobs. Everything that you want to last never does. Everything you want to last; you have to say goodbye to. Things seem to become distant memories as soon as they begin. Sometimes it can feel as though you weren't even a part of it at all.

I scold myself for not making things last longer, but I try, I really do try. I’m an advocate for living in the moment but it’s becoming harder and harder to do so. Every second seems like it’s slipping through my fingers like sand, impossible to hang on to forever. It's one of life's greatest frustrations, time’s cruelty. Even more terrifying is the realisation that one day, the place you are sitting may not even exist anymore. A person you love may change into someone unrecognisable. The family or friends you keep in your company may leave to be replaced with a new presence. You may forget your time somewhere, or visit a place that once held fond memories, only to replace them with something new. The present so quickly becomes the past, moments can’t be relived, and nothing is untouched by change, it’s inevitable, scary and painful.

The passage of time brings with it new chapters, new beginnings, but most profound are the endings. Words have so much power over people. Especially that bittersweet, Herculean word; goodbye. A goodbye could be monumental, it could work as a bookend for a part of your life. A goodbye could be fleeting as you say it to a loved one that you’ll see again tomorrow. A goodbye can be painful as you know you’ll never re-capture or re-live the moment you’re saying farewell to. A goodbye can be freeing, letting go of someone or something negative to allow yourself to grieve and move forward without being weighed down. A goodbye doesn’t have to be spoken or even directly thought for you to know that it is occurring, that something is ending.

Something that fascinates me is the meaning and depth that words can hold. Is the emphasis on the use of the word, or on the memory you’re attaching to it? Is it that every time we say goodbye, it’s an amalgamation of all the times we’ve had to say it before, and that’s why it still stings after years of practice? All I can attest to is that when you say goodbye in those silent moments of reflectiveness; the goodbyes when you know this is the end of an era, it hurts. My God, it hurts. My question to you is: should we give so much power to these landmark goodbyes, or should we treat them as fleeting and meaningless as to avoid getting hurt by the weight of that one singular word? From my own experience, I’ve tried to do both. I know that avoiding a goodbye in the moment, doesn’t lessen the pain down the road. I feel things deeply, so I think for me, it’s inescapable. Whether the goodbye is positive or negative for me, I still feel the incredible weight of sorrow that I know a part of my life is over forever. However, maybe that pain is a necessary part of welcoming a new beginning.

I remember when I left Secondary School. Now, bear in mind that I was so excited to finish school. Not because I didn’t enjoy the lessons, learning, subjects, teachers or school in general, but because of the people that filled the hallways that I needed to escape. When the day of my final exam came, I felt elated as I left that exam hall with a pen that had run dry of its ink. This was until I went to say my goodbyes to teachers and friends. When I saw my form tutor, the woman who had been there for me from year 8 to year 11, who listened to me, helped me, believed in me and oversaw my years at the school, I broke down. That goodbye was so difficult for me even though I couldn’t wait to leave. Walking out of those gates for the last time with people that I don’t see anymore par one, I knew this was the end of something monumental. It was a hard goodbye when the time came no matter how much I told myself I didn’t care. Five years since that day and the memory of the goodbye still hurts despite my not missing school (more on this later). But do you know what came from leaving school? Sixth form.

Saying goodbye to my younger years at school allowed me to say hello to my next adventure of two years at sixth form. A new adventure where I could break free of my prior limitations. When I say I thrived in this environment, that is an understatement. I was excelling in every part of my life. My clothing was finally ‘me’, I grew tenfold in confidence, I had great relationships with all of my teachers, I made friends with the entirety of my year group, I had the best of friends, and I took the best classes. If I had refused to bid farewell to secondary school, it would’ve been a refusal to move forward. I wouldn’t have grown into the person I was meant to be. I would have none of the memories from those years because I would’ve been obsessing over a lost past that can’t be reclaimed.

The end of Sixth Form, all of those memories, all of those people, two of the greatest academic years of my life, that was another tough one. Sixth Form gave me the chance to grow, and it’s only because of it that I decided to go to University and study my passions. It gave me so much and suddenly, all too quickly, it was time to say goodbye forever. That part of my life, I cherish, and I miss so dearly still to this day, but if I hadn’t had the courage to say goodbye, I wouldn’t have the life-changing memories, knowledge and degree that University gave me. Uni solidified my love for English and writing and allowed me the space to practice that. Saying goodbye to Sixth Form was necessary to move on to this. You can’t stew in the past, no matter how safe it is there, and I need to remind myself of this still to this day.

Recently, I’ve finished my three-year degree at University and all of these feelings of goodbyes resurfaced. Uni became my third second home (after school and sixth form) and I was being evicted, yet again. University was once my scary, unknown future, it was my new adventure. Now here I am three years later, finding myself having to say goodbye again all too soon. It. Was. Hard. Now, my future is as unpredictable as it can get. Am I scared? Yes. Am I worried? Not so much. I know now that every goodbye means something new is around the corner, and I don’t want to run from that. If I’d run from the school goodbye, I wouldn’t be who I am. If I’d run from the Sixth form goodbye, I wouldn’t have all the knowledge and passion from University, and if I run from the university goodbye, I’ll be stuck, forever. No new memories, no new friends, no new nothing.

Life stagnates if we refuse to say goodbye to what’s gone. If you stay in one spot forever, you’ll sacrifice all the good that is yet to come, that you will live through and experience. Life doesn’t stop for one happy moment, you have all of your years to create thousands, that doesn’t happen if you stop living for the fleeting happiness of one memory, one era, or one person. Sometimes, we have to make a choice. In the bookshelf of your life, do you want a singular scrapbook sat isolated and dusty because of a refusal to accept what’s gone, or hundreds upon hundreds of scrapbooks filled to the brim with pictures and souvenirs? Notice I say scrapbook and not an album. Life isn’t polished, pristine or perfect. It’s fragmented, random, and yes, sometimes pages get stuck together as memories do, jagged, and a perfectly unperfect mess of memories, but they’re all yours because you allowed yourself to say goodbye.

Leaving school, sixth form and university, all were hard goodbyes for me to make, but something brighter and better always came from it, and I have the happy memories from all of these eras and chapters of my life to hold tighter and dearer than the pain of the farewell. Memories are everything. I could leave this world with nothing but the clothes on my back, and as long as I had my memories, I’d be okay. I’ve experienced the loss of a beloved pet, my cat, Scooby who had been my best friend for twelve years. When I lost him, I refused to move on. He didn’t get to live, how could I continue in his absence? It was a hard path to tread but when I had two new kittens come into my life who I could care for, I knew I had to move past my grief. If I refused to say goodbye properly to the era of Scooby and I, refused to say goodbye to my best friend in an acknowledgement of our time together, I would never have felt the love of another pet again. I would never have my two loving cats, Cas and Stitch today. I know that one day far from now, I will have to say goodbye to them too, but I’d take the pain of that farewell any day just to have their lifetime of love, and to give them their best life.

On this note, the knowledge that your present will one day be the past is daunting and worrying, but the goodbyes will never end. In the meantime, why don’t we take every goodbye not as an end, but as a beginning? After all, there’s always something after a goodbye. I’ve lost touch with so many friends that I miss. People who were there for huge milestones in my life that I don’t get to share experiences with anymore. But people, even our dearest friends and family, aren’t exemplary to change, especially change with time. Sometimes people drift apart, find other people, and goodbyes don’t even occur verbally, there just a wandering thought. Goodbyes are sometimes thought of as forgetting, leaving or removing an aspect of your life, but it doesn’t have to mean any of that. I choose to hold no ill will towards anyone who has left my life or bid me farewell because my goodbye in return means ‘thank you for all the happiness and love you gave me, I’ll remember it always, but now I must move on, I’ll not forget our time together.’ That is how I want to frame all of my goodbyes, whether person or institute or job, whatever it may be. If our time is over, thank you for that small portion we shared.

Goodbyes seem to stand out as the entirety of an experience. The hurt may not ever leave but please, choose to contain the sadness, or whatever feeling you may harbour towards the goodbye, within the goodbye. Put all of the emotion in that word, the full stop at the end of a chapter, don’t let it spill out into the previous happy memories and experiences and taint them like ink spilt over a novel. The end of an era is the goodbye expressed in the full stop, leave the sadness in that dot.

Throughout our lives, we are going to have to say goodbye more times than we would like. It'll never end. After all, what once was your future, becomes yet another past we must leave behind for something new. But good can always come from a farewell. Remember, there’s always a positive in the end of an era, you just may not know it yet.

Signing off,

Bobbie May Corleys