A Curious Girl: Time to say goodbye

It's my last day at work today.

I don't like saying goodbye. You can never do it properly. You always miss someone and the timing's all wrong. There's never a proper way to do it. I said goodbye to most of my church on Sunday. I think everyone must be farewellophobic. No one wants to say goodbye. It's all 'see you again'. Even someone I met for the first time on Sunday didn't say goodbye or nice to meet you but "I will see you again, though?" As if there can be no goodbyes. One guy put it like this, "If I don't see you before, see you in Heaven"

Goodbye... it's supposed to come with ceremony, you have to make a big thing of it. You know how it is when you're with someone and you can't quite find the right way to finally say goodbye. You do everything from 'Nice to have met you' to 'Enjoy the rest of your day' to 'good luck in wherever you're going' to 'I'll call/e-mail' until you finally have to drag yourself away, get on the bus or walk your separate ways.

I sometimes think it would be a lot easier to just vanish in the night. Actually it's getting more and more difficult to totally vanish these days, which is rather nice. You could be abducted by yetis to serve as their pet and court jester, then you'd come across a handy Himalayan broadband phone box and lo and behold "You've Got Mail!" (that's actually grammatically incorrect, you know). And some people will be wondering where you went, and a few won't even realise you went anywhere. "Oh, didn't I tell you? I took a quick trip to meet the descendents of Sherpa Tensing, got a little held up. Tell Mum I love her. Tell Chrissie she can have my CDs. Send my fleece and a couple of jokebooks."

All in all it might be a more honest way of going, and a lot less painful than saying, "I'd write but I find letters dreadfully impersonal, so I'll keep your phone number until I inevitably realise it'd be way too embarrassing to get in touch now or I've forgotten who you are."

I don't even know what the big goodbye party is going to be like. We're supposed to be going to drinks on Friday but I don't know where yet. And I managed to screw up my last chance of seeing Kathleen (my old next-door neighbour) by double-booking. At least term starts in October... I can't wait to get back to saying hello again!

Random word for today: scatological

<< last entry ... next entry >>
top of page

Give food for free.