Why do we always have to say goodbye?

 

As the bus moved away from the familiar station, my heart ached with agony and my vision blurred with tears.

Normally, I’m not the kind of person to show weakness in a public place, but the surge of tormenting feelings caused by this bitter separation has overwhelmed my self-control. Still, I wiped hastily my overflowing tears and tried to scan every corner of the main street along with the other cozy places we used to hang out in, it's as if I was  imprisoning those last pictures in my mind so I could place myself into their frame, and perpetually play the heartening memories they preciously hold. For I could clearly see the mirage of my son running cheerfully down the street, and me chasing after him under the gentle warmth of the evening sun.

Why do we always have to say goodbye?

Why do we always have to pack our stuff and leave behind a place we used to call home? Why do we have to erase the familiar faces we used to encounter, the grocery stores we were accustomed to run errands in, and the road of our evening walk we heedlessly used to take? And above all, why do we have to conceal this separation anxiety and pretend it to be a mere trifle? Why are we forced to always keep moving forward and not allowed the time to halt and take a moment to assimilate the present and look back to the past?

What a cruelty to be constantly dragged throughout this life and be compelled at every time to walk away without a proper goodbye!

I was leaving another dear city for good, and I was saying my goodbyes…again!

Moving six times within a short period of roughly three years has been the second hardest experience I’ve ever been through; the first will deservingly go to motherhood x). At every time I start boxing, I know instantly that this rented home sweet home will gradually morph into a strange house crowded with our packed goods and furniture. And as usual, just when the process of forging tender yet sturdy bonds with a new city comes to a triumphant and heartwarming end, a new opportunity peeks over the horizon, and we find ourselves seduced to venture towards its direction.

Whether it’s about a better job or a better location, the motive has never fully compensated what we were losing in the process; a place once we called home, streets and shortcuts we knew by heart, amiable people we had the chance to be neighbors with, and favorite places in which we peacefully chilled out.

Moreover, what has made this moving particularly harder, was the heavy load of guilt I felt knowing that I was snatching handful pages of sweet memories from my child’s childhood. He was old enough now to show me with his pointing little finger the way home when we are out in the neighboring for a walk, he had developed sufficient social skills to knit threads of his first friendships, and his growing brain had remarkably associated his favorite activities and comfortable routines with the surrounding he is accustomed to see and feel.

But now, as the youthful of the team, he too has to say goodbye to all of his early tender memories.

Sometimes I wonder if it is really a necessity to move, or has it unconsciously become a nasty habit! But on a second thought, who on earth would like to change homes continuously like an errant vagabond? Who would want to feel like his heart is brutally torn to small pieces every time he quits a so familiar and intimate place? And who would like to waste time, energy, and money on such draining specimen of hell?

In fact, human beings inherently tend to settle, but such a luxury is not an option nowadays, not for us anyways. Maybe I’m looking at it from this angle because otherwise I’ll certainly lose my mind. I believe however, that settling per se might be just a deceitful illusion if not the biggest scam. In such a changing world of which balances collapse overnight, enjoying the amenity of possessing a house, a car, and a regular job turns out to be a dangerously poisonous comfort.

Seemingly therefore, we don’t have a choice but to say goodbye!

One should know when it’s time to let it go; when it’s time to exit a beautiful chapter and welcome, hopefully, a better one.

It has never been easy to say goodbye; my eyes couldn’t but shed tears at the view of a distancing ex-home, to an ex-neighborhood, and then an ex-city, moving steadily away to a new unknown.