My heart is paralyzed
My head was oversized
I'll take the high road like I should
You said it's meant to be
That it's not you, it's me
You're leaving now for my own good
That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say...
(50 Ways To Say Goodbye by Train)
here's a good read for us who seem to find it hard to say goodbye...
The Brave Heart: How to Say Goodbye
“Breaking up is hard to do.” Neil Sedaka
One of the things I am trying to teach myself is how to say goodbye. I have taught my kids to say goodbye to their friends by escorting them to the door, looking them in the eye, and sincerely thanking them for the visit. But there is a lot more to goodbye, isn’t there?
Farewell soirees, funerals, retirement events, reunions—if you don’t like saying goodbye, these events can be uncomfortable.
When you are young, you really don’t know how to say goodbye. You mumble some words, shut the door, and turn your back. Then it happens to you. Everybody knows what it feels like when your best friend moves away. You cry in your pillow. You miss them so much. You want to tell them how you feel.
You know something is missing. You want to say goodbye properly. But you don’t quite know how.
As you get older, you master different ways of saying goodbye. When I left my family to attend school in Toronto, my sister’s way of saying goodbye was awfully simple: she avoided it. I knew she cared a lot.
Lots of people avoid saying goodbye. Who can blame you? It’s too painful. You might get emotional. It’s much easier to suppress your feelings. It’s much easier easier to say “forget about it.”
I think our significant relationships are marked by what we have learned about saying goodbye. If you don’t say goodbye properly, let’s say you run away, practice avoidance, or lie about your true feelings, one thing is sure: a bad goodbye will follow you.
Like the pop song says, breaking up is hard to do. People who cannot break up properly become imprisoned by their inability to be forthright. When you can’t say goodbye, you may not resolve your feelings. Sometimes difficult feelings keep returning to you or you fall into patterns. You wish there were no unfinished business. We all want to move on but sometimes it feels like we’re running in place.
Is it wrong to skip goodbye when you no longer want a relationship with someone? For example, a good friend of mine is drifting away. What should I do? Should I let the friendship die a slow death of negligence? Or should I stab the relationship in the heart with a clear and honest goodbye?
“I am finding it hard to be friends with you. We have been friends for a long time but right now it’s not working. It’s not the same anymore. I find it too difficult to be friends with you. If you’re not ready to resolve this, I think it’s time to move on.”
Now who the heck can say that?
A proper goodbye can change your life for the better. I said goodbye to my parents before each died and although I was enormously afraid, I said the words I needed to say. If you ever have said goodbye properly, you know how right it feels.
“I love you. I will always love you. You are my everything. If it’s okay with you I think I can let you go now.”
My children are at the stage when they are beginning and ending many relationships. I would like my son and daughter to know how to say goodbye in an honest, respectful, and sincere way. Often there is no way to avoid the pain, but there is a way to recognize and respect each person. Easier said than done, right?
Are you like me? Do you have a lot of unfinished business in your life? There are people that I have treated so poorly. I should have been more honest. I should have shown more courage. I should have been braver.
Maturity is a funny thing. How you say good bye tells you a lot about where you stand on the road of life. Can you be sensitive and honest with someone or do you bury your emotions and hope they will go away?
Sometimes, when we feel we are wronged we really want to practice avoidance and justify our denial. Sometimes we say it’s not worth it.
It’s just not worth being your friend, we say. But what we’re really saying is that self-honesty and genuine respect for another person is not worth it.
We all realize, sooner or later, that relationships only grow when we are courageous enough to voice our true feelings. We know that relationships deepen when we work through our grievances, when we express our sincere feelings, when we say how hurt we have been.
When you say goodbye to someone, whether it’s for eight hours or forever, you try to express your appreciation for your time together. But most of all, I think, you recognize that life is transitory, anything can happen, that this moment might very well be the last honest moment you have together.
How do you know you have said goodbye properly? How do you deal with the inevitable mourning period when you miss the person even as you are thankful the relationship is over? How do you avoid that seemingly endless make up and break-up cycle?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that I still possess wounds from relationships gone by. I still think about my failures, and in this way old wounds sometimes never heal.
Your friend leaves you and this hurts. We cry for many reasons but the tears of goodbye seem the most potent. I thought when I was a child that death was merely a vacation. You could simply pretend that the person was temporarily gone. How wrong I was.
I also realize that I have always wanted to avoid the pain of goodbye. I have never wanted to confront my own tears. Death is the toughest goodbye of all. There is so much that should have been said. So much that was unsaid. So much that could have been better.
When the tender tears of goodbye flow, if you are strong enough to let them, the tears can heal you.
“I just wanted to say goodbye. I wanted just to tell you how I feel. I wanted you to know how close you are.”
Whether you’re a young person deciding to break-up with your first sweet heart or a senior who is afraid to go the hospice and say goodbye to a dear friend—every moment is an opportunity to search our hearts for the truth.
What is the truth?
At the same that we are so easily damaged, so vulnerable to the words and actions of others, we also know that it is our relationships that define us. It is okay to let go of your difficult relationships. It is okay to say goodbye. But how different life would be if we opened our hearts and practiced being brave?
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Dear You,
i lost count of the days,
it has been months but i lost count of it too...
though everything remains unmoved on my side,
our zero visibility is undeniably painful but somewhat helpful...
someday i will eventually be able to put these photos and messages away..
someday i will be able to keep you away from my dreams...
someday i will be able to break my silence...
someday i will be able to answer them why...
and someday...
i will find a perfect way to say goodbye..
xxx,
ceangy
