Goodbye Forever

At the end of last year I couldn't decide if I wanted to stay at school or go home for the summer. I had planned to go home and work, but I felt that I needed to stay for some reason. Mainly I hate change, hate moving around when I feel I shouldn't have to, and while going home would have been returning to normalcy and comfort, I had developed ties here that I didn't want to lose. This is ridiculous of course; a lot of people go home for the summer and see no one that they know from school and are fine. This is especially true after one's freshman year, when you are expected to return home, but once I settle somewhere I hate to move, hate to change, lest what I've been building should shatter and be no more. Also, I already had a job here and didn't want to find one in Portland. All of this turned out to be terrible reasoning on my part.

Everyone I had stayed for would eventually leave, and I would have had my choice of two terrifically well-paying jobs had I gone home, where I would have had virtually no expenses and therefore saved a ton of money, all while getting to see my family. I did visit home once school got out. M-Lite and I went home in May for a week. I wanted to stay for two, but there was a scheduling conflict. Once I was home I realized that I was crazy for not returning and never wanted to leave again, but the damage had already been done. I'm one of those people who's scared to change their mind. Anyway, my sister H was kind of mad at me for deciding to stay here vs. returning home, and I agree that I would have had a cool summer in Portland. So our last morning at home we're in the driveway getting ready to leave, and H comes out to her car to drive to school and gives me a frown because I'm leaving when we both know that I should stay, and I call out after her "Goodbye Forever" and she says that she hates me and I laugh and she drives away.

That's how the phrase got started, because joking is the only way I can cope with awful truths. Not that I haven't seen my family since then, or don't plan on going home every chance I get, but behind the phrase there's the lurking suspicion that it might be true on some level. Two of my sisters are married, one of them is on the east coast, and there's a good chance that I won't see her for a couple of years. How do people live like this? How and why do we move away and set up separate lives? I live with M-Lite right now, which is awesome, because we're sisters and we've always gotten along pretty well, but one day she'll get married, and we'll split up our belongings - I'll take the movies and she'll take the appliances - and I can't help but feel that it'll be something akin to divorce.

There's no substitute for getting to be with your family. And now I'm sad for having written this, but I can't help but feel that while I'm away at school I'm missing out on something better, and I know that it's perceived as foolish to try and go back, that you have to stop living in the past at some point, but I miss home. I am homesick. Christmas will probably kill me, to be home for just two weeks before having to leave, and it's all part of the larger realization that my home will never be my home again, that it hasn't been my home since I left, that no matter how long I go back for -two weeks at christmas or all of summer break - I'm still just visiting and will have to say goodbye.