We’ve started the process of saying goodbye. The most difficult one came first – my amazing therapist of 4.5 years. It seems odd, that the person I would have the hardest time saying goodbye to would be the one person with whom I did not share a reciprocal relationship. I do not know her even a fraction of the way she knows me and yet, it doesn’t matter. The purpose of a therapeutic relationship exists for the client. There is no need for an even give and take. For the person on the couch it is mostly take, and it took me years to get over that fact and be content in a disproportionate relationship. But she made me feel like it was okay to take. It was okay to be me and to need. It was okay to be heard and seen and accepted. It was and is. I will always be grateful for the gift of her presence and insight. It might be her job, but it was done with love. And that has made all the difference.
Now it is time to prepare to say goodbye to our friends. The church where we found respite and healing and new ways of being. The family (both blood and adopted) that took us in during holidays and special occasions and made us feel like this place had always been home. The people who watched our children and cared for them like their own. The friends who stood by us through everything on the scale of amazing to shitty. We have been so lucky. Fortunate. #blessed
And then we’ll have to say goodbye to our home. The little red house that was never really ours, but it is the one we brought our daughter home to. The one where our son drew on the wall during his naptime. The house where our marriage nearly fell apart and then was put back together again. It’s where we learned what a water main is and how to shut it off and where we learned that basements flood, even if you think they won’t. The funky old house with radiators for heating and no central air. It has been perfectly perfect.
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While I ponder through saying goodbye and all of the emotions that come with it, I’m struck by the level of passivity with which I tend to live my life. There is always this assumption that I’ll do that later, or I’ll talk to that person tomorrow, or I’ll see so and so next time. I spend so little time present in the right now. My mind is often occupied with concerns about the future or wondering about the past. Because it’s easier. Being present requires that we let go of whatever came before or is to come so that we can be in the right now. And what if the right now is too painful? If living into the moment means a swell of emotions comes spilling out (often ones we don’t want to feel), then, of course, it is easier to focus on something else. Anything else.
It’s only been a month since we found out we would be moving to Kansas City, but we’ve known that we’re leaving since January. You’d think I had plenty of time to prepare for this. What it comes down to is that I’ve had plenty of time to ignore it.
Four sessions ago I told my therapist about how terrible I am at goodbyes, so she suggested we spend a little time in each of our remaining sessions saying goodbye. Cue the waterworks. (I told her at our last session that I was convinced that her goal for the last month was to make me cry as much as possible. She denied it. I’m still suspicious.) But it forced me to be present. It challenged me to be in the right now. And in those moments, goodbye did not feel quite so overwhelming.
While there have been many days where I denied that this move is happening, I have tried my best to say goodbye to things in my own way. Perhaps those ways are only known or visible to me, but the heart is the first to say goodbye.
And so, I thank the people I’ve met in Chicagoland for their friendship.
I thank our church community for their encouragement and support.
I thank this house for all of the precious memories.
I thank my family for creating a home in Downers Grove.
Yes, the tears will fall when it is truly time to say goodbye. It will hurt like hell. I will probably be kicking and screaming inside. But I will be there, in that moment, feeling all the feels and creating space for what comes next by embracing all of the good things that we had in this home. It is time to make a new home, but as my therapist reminded me on my way out the door – “All these amazing things you’ve experienced? They are yours. And no one can take them away once you have lived them.” To which I say – Amen.
