I’ve never been especially good at saying goodbyes. You would think I’d be better, having been raised an Army brat. I spent most of my childhood being the New Kid in one school or other, and that meant saying goodbye to the kids at the previous school. So you would think that by this stage of my life I’d have it down to a science.
Still, I found myself struggling when it came time to say goodbye to JT. We met about almost a year and a half ago when a friend brought her to my birthday dinner at Chico’s. In her I immediately found a kindred spirit: we laughed at the same jokes, finished our sentences the same way, even sharing certain “beverage preferences.”
When I was hired on the front desk of the hotel where she was front office manager, the bond only grew stronger as we spent most of our time on the clock together. Eventually, a bunch of us started spending our free time together, and our status as mutual besties was sealed.
Recently JT reconnected with someone from her past, and she decided to move to Florida to be with him. As happy as I am for her, I’m going to miss the shit out of her. I know that I’ll get to see her again (I’m planning on flying down in October for her birthday), but it still sucks knowing she’s not on the other side of town. It was a comfort knowing that I could stop by her job and say hey, or we could meet up after work for a Sea Of Sangria at Chico’s.
Since she left Greenville early this morning, she stopped by the hotel last night to say goodbye to me. As I hugged her, I could feel the telltale lump forming in my throat. My eyes started to prickle, and I knew I was seconds away from a good healthy, heart-broken cry. But we’d promised each other “no tears” so I had to man up and dig my nails into the palms of my hands. I was actually doing okay at keeping the tears at bay until we walked away from each other. I made the crucial error of looking back over my shoulder in time to see JT walking out the door. The sight of her red curls bouncing behind her as she walked out was just too much. I choked out something about “needing a minute” to my coworker, and found a quiet corner to cry into.
Eventually I got myself under control, but it all reminded me of when I was a kid moving around all the time. All over again, I felt myself being separated from something familiar and it hurt like hell. There are two comforts that I have that I didn’t when I was a kid. For one thing, we didn’t have Facebook back then. Thanks to the wonders of the interweb, I can keep up with her in a way that I never could with my childhood friends. Second, I’ll be seeing her again in less than two months. I think I can manage without her physical presence for that long. I just don’t want to have to.
