There's No One Left In The World, That I Can Hold Onto, There Is Really No One Left At All, There Is Only You

--"Trust", The Cure

I have a habit of not saying good-bye to people. It manifests itself in different ways. At work, they call me Mr. Stealth because I try to disguise when I leave by carrying a piece of paper as if I'm heading to the copier, but instead walk out the door to my car. On the phone, I have a habit saying thank you just before I hang up. At parties and shows, most of the time I can't stand long, drawn-out good-byes so the more time I spend with people the shorter my good-byes become until they're almost non-existent.

I used to think it was because I didn't like calling attention to myself. It was sort of a corollary to my aversion to saying hello to people first thing in the morning. I'd rather just jump into the actual meat of the conversation than waste time on small talk. It's the same theory on the phone. At work, I rarely delve into asking about my customers' personal lives. Questions like "how was your day?" or "how are your kids doing?" rarely start off my conversations. In fact, I usually start off with the customary "the reason for my call is..." because most of the time I really don't care for all the rest. Call it a lack of manners, call it impatience, call it plain being forthright, I dislike wasting time with pleasantries.

Now, however, I think it goes deeper than that.

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Back at Bethany Elementary School, where I went for Kindergarten and First Grade, I had two friends named Adam and Gus. They were my closest buds. We basically did everything together, including hanging out after school at each other's houses. Now, my memory has never been that spot-on to begin with so I can't exactly say how often that actually occurred, but there were enough instances for me to remember that it was a pattern. During that time it seemed we would be lifelong friends just because I was unaware of the concept (yet) of losing friends due to outside circumstances. For me at the time and at that stage of development, once I made a friend that would be a friend I would have for the rest of my life.

The trouble started when my parents started checking the school up the street, St. Rita's. It turns out academically St. Rita's was the creme de la creme in the area. It became my mom's mission to get me into that school despite my already having formed fast bonds at Bethany. All of this was unknown to me at the time because, hey, I was in First Grade and, yeah, my parents have always been secretive around me to begin with. I seriously remember the chain of events being finishing First Grade, having a party during the summer one week before school started during which my parents informed I wouldn't be coming back to Bethany next year, and starting St. Rita's in Second Grade. There was no discussion about it at the beginning of summer. There wasn't even a chance for me to properly say good-bye because I found out when all the rest of my classmates found out which, if you really think about it, is a dirty trick to pull on your son. One week before I thought I would be going back to see my friends, it would turn out that I would have to make all new ones.

As I recall, my good-bye wasn't really sincere because it hadn't sunk in yet that that party was really the last good times I would be having with Adam and Gus.

As it turned out, my parents invited them over again for my birthday later that year, but by then I was already a month or two entrenched into St. Rita's. Whereas these days, six to eight weeks wouldn't be enough time to forget about them, back then it was a whole lifetime I had had to make new friends and forget about my old ones. That birthday turned out to be the last time I did see those two. But by then the damage was done. I had already stopped caring what they thought because, hey, I knew I would never see those guys again. Like the saying goes, they were already dead to me. Through no fault of their own they had ceased being people of import to me and as such warranted no heartfelt or long good-bye. I basically saw them off with a vague promise to come to their birthday parties and never heard from either of them again.

That has come to be my pattern, if somebody is forced to part company with me then I stop caring about them. It's not like I want to forget about people, but it's a defense mechanism I've built up to guard against people I've grown attached to hurting me. If I don't give people a proper good-bye, replete with descriptions of how much they mean to me, then it becomes easier to tear about the friendship in my mind. It couldn't have been that strong, I seem to rationalize, otherwise they wouldn't be leaving it so easily. Or, worse yet, if I'm the one who's doing the leaving then I rationalize it by saying something akin to "if they were really good friends, then they'd come with me." In either case, I never want to give people the satisfaction of a true farewell because only my friends warrant a farewell and, since we're not going to be seeing each other as much, then, obviously, we were never really friends.

I never claimed to have exactly the most logical mind. A couple of my close friends have figured out the trick that I like to work backwards. I like to work out what action I'm going to undertake and then think of a reason why it makes to undertake this action. In this case, I feel awkward about saying good-bye to people so I've come to rationalize it with the whole "they were never my friends" theory.

The thing about that is I've had to leave a lot of good people behind and there are a lot of instances where I regret not having that closure with them. I hate to use her as a example, but the farewell I gave to Jina was the return of her gifts to me all burnt, which doesn't count as a good-bye. With Tara I sort of stopped calling her. With John, Paul, Phillip, and Tommy, I had to quit Boy Scouts just so I wouldn't to go through the awkwardness of not seeing them in high school the following year. In every case, I tried to pretend that their losses didn't bother me. I tried to pretend that since I never said good-bye, I still had the power. They never got to know how their loss really messed me up. And because they never knew then their loss really never messed me up, right? That's what I actually thought.

----

So that's why I still refuse to say good-bye to most people who know me well. I still have that superstition that if you say those words to someone, you let them have a piece of you. And, if it is true that you'll never those certain few again, then that's a piece you can never get back. I figure if I never say good-bye to anyone, then I'll never have to give up anything of myself.

Sometimes I think I'd rather be alone then risk losing a part of me forever.

Other times I wonder who I'm saving all those parts for if not for the people who I've grown to trust and respect.

It's a mystery.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers