Au Revoir, Adios, Goodbye

Goodbyes are the worst. I really do not like them. They are so final, absolute, and so brief. Whether it be saying goodbye to a friend, a classmate, a school, a bike, a car, a place, or whatever, I never enjoy it and never feel the goodbye gives the time spent with said person place or thing justice. Maybe this is why I have a problem throwing things away or letting go of things. Currently my dorm room has more things than I know what to do with, as I shove things into any nook or cranny I can find, and a lot of it consists of things I just can't seem to detach from. For example, I keep every movie/play/event stub that I go to because for me it holds a memory (right now I am looking at my Gershwin Theatre ticket stub from when I saw Wicked on Broadway for the first time with Kaley in January). Because I can't seem to part from these little gems, I have little pieces of trash essentially on my desk, in my wallet, or in my drawers. What am I going to do with these things? I don't know, but it's nice to look at them every once in a while and bring a memory to mind. Every time I try to clean my room and determinedly tell myself I am going to be relentless and throw anything I don't need away, I look at these little pieces of garbage or paraphernalia, give a small smile and tilt my head to the side as a memory comes to mind, and put it right back where I found it. By the end of it all, my room is no cleaner and I have no more extra space. Fail.

All of this attachment goes back to the fact that I just hate saying goodbye to anything. In less than a week I am going to move out of my dorm and go back home for the summer (!), and even though my freshman year of college had a lot of memories I'd rather forget and the dorm lifestyle is never the greatest, I'm going to miss my little dorm room of C210. After all, my dorm was alway there for me to come back to and gave me a place to cry or talk to my mom in peace and privacy, allowed me to study in the comfort of my own desk while other students had to deal with the sneezes, coughs, clicking, and chewing of other library-goers, and was my home away from home for the past nine months. Although I can hardly wait to go back to California, I'm going to miss this little dorm and it'll be tough to say goodbye. Not to mention saying goodbye to a year of college in general. This year tested me in just about every area and helped me discover emotions I didn't even know were words let alone existed inside of me. Although a lot of them were bad emotions, I learned from them and grew closer to the other freshmen here with me who are going through the same things. My fellow freshmen teammates would vent for hours about our terrible lives and how wonderful high school was, and in that time we shared laughs and memories and grew together. Sure we'll all still be together as sophomores, but it'll be a little sad to say goodbye to our freshmen year.

Whether it be saying goodbye to my childhood, high school and high school friends (talk about a tearfest right there), or even an old car, I've gone through a lot of goodbyes in my life as anyone has and they're all a little bittersweet. Sure goodbyes can indicate new beginnings and possibilities, but you're always saying adios to a little portion of your life and the things and people that you shared it with. I suppose that's what memories are for: so we can remember the times we shared and not have goodbyes be so absolute. Well, all I can do I guess is live life to the fullest and cherish every moment! That and practice my waving...