maybe so. we don’t get to say goodbye, always - this has been, for me, the hardest part of letting go.
(what would i have said? in my memory, i always rewrite last moments. i promise myself i could have texted more or done better, but - . real life, after all, isn’t full of movie speeches. i am learning the right moment is actually one that comes much earlier than you anticipated).
the world is, and this is not a metaphor, on fire. how can i tell you that things will make-sense. you are all too much, tragically, like me, online. i cannot will you to worship it away with the blind faith of getting better. globally, it might not.
but personally, one day - with age, and practice, and therapy (many) - you can learn something else, too. it is that endings are often actually cocoons. (a note about cocoons: they turn caterpillars into goo. i am writing to you as someone who has recently hit rock bottom. i can promise you this is the same situation, with the same premonition of agony).
new beginnings are not always sudden. they are clever, and difficult, and sneak up over the course of many nights. how ironic - we always want to say goodbye in a long aria of passion; we always want the change to just be there and over with - inevitably, it’s the other way around. new beginnings are rarely movie moments. when you move to the city to start your big-girl life, it is still just you, in different shoes, alone in an apartment.
when you wake up on your birthday, do you ever actually feel a-new-age. when it’s the day of the big event, doesn’t the event sometimes just feel strange - you keep reminding yourself this is it! it’s really happening! but then you’re crossing the stage in your cap-and-gown or you’re signing the papers on the house or you’re adopting the dog you’ve heard all about - and it’s just a day, like all the others.
the beginning doesn’t come, because beginnings are slow. the goodbye is quick, and the void comes sloshing in, and it seems - there’s just nothing, in an endless expanse, for miles. endings make a lot of noise, which makes the silence after them sort of unbearable. they like to make a splash like that.
we rarely, rarely get obvious beginnings. the bolt of lightning. the meet-cute in movies. you are maybe in the middle of a beginning, and you won’t be able to see it until you’re out of it. and at the end of the beginning - when you’re in it, you will look back, and it will feel like a goodbye, like - oh, when did that happen? and sometimes, that will suck ass. but mostly, you will look back on who-you-were and say, oh, i still love her, but i’m so glad we survived to be not-her.
the thing that gets easier is looking around and saying - oh, that’s lovely. because what changes is that things become lovely again. the softness slips back in. you start reading about hope and laughing again. you take up passion projects. you know how to set boundaries and walk away from arguments and how to hold your own when saying i’d like more ketchup. it doesn’t come quick. it is just a slow dawn of new color; the world slowly painting itself back in. and you will be, how ever improbably - happy.
some things won’t travel with you. i know this, and you know this. when they go, they are gone.
but when you survive, that memory of surviving? that always carries on. and the beginning will come. and it will sneak up into your heart and create a beautiful middle-of-something. and it will give you something new and different and strong and exciting. it will give you new music and new friends and new art. it will give you change. and you will not be taken apart.
