Tuesday Night Goodbyes
BY ANSLEY THOMPSON
Ansley is an undergrad at Texas A&M trying to spend more time with people, whether it be over coffee or climbing. And when she’s not with people, she’s learning to watercolor, attempting to cook, or planning trips and signing her friends up for them, too.
I spent the Tuesday nights of my senior year of high school with my six best friends laughing, lamenting, and living life together. They were my Everyday People. The people that know about the first date, the lunch order, and the eyeliner that was crooked last Wednesday. They’ve seen it all and still stay. The Everyday People.
Like every other high school senior, we had planned the next four years out, separately. Unconsciously, we planned to say goodbye to our Everyday People to go make new Everyday People. The month of August felt like watching every friend drive away with no question of the next time we would see each other. The month of August taught me how to say goodbye to the Everyday People.
I learned to acknowledge goodbye. It’s inevitable that it will happen, so don’t resist the change or brush over it like nothing happened. Acknowledge that it sucks. It sucks that the current state of things, the current relationships, will never be the same again. Things are changing, not just the coordinates on a map, but people are changing, too. The scariest part of goodbye is knowing that all these people that we see and shape every day are now going to change, and we won’t see the play by play. People, relationships, and trajectories are evolving, and there is no way to control or stop it.
So people leave, and we look forward to the day we see them again. To hug them, to see what’s changed, and how they’ve grown. That’s the thing about goodbyes, at some point it’s selfish to not say goodbye. In a year of Tuesday nights, my Everyday People probably learned all they were going to learn from me at the time. So I let go and let them grow with others in ways that I couldn’t help them with then. Sometimes in resisting goodbye we aren’t truly loving someone by not letting go; we’re holding them back from becoming the best person they could be. Truly loving our Everyday People sometimes looks like letting them go so they can grow somewhere else for a time.
But there’s something beautiful about that, too. Once I accepted that people were going to continue growing and changing without me, I saw the gift the world was getting. After our Everyday People change us and we change them, we all go and change more of the world. Our influence on each other will influence others, and strangers will change because of us. In goodbye, people change, but people also change other people, and it’s a gift to the world to let go and spread light, joy, and good news to more than just our Everyday People.
And the best part about goodbye? The best part is the next hello. With the Everyday People, it’s only ever a goodbye for a time. Everyday People come back for holidays, weddings, and reunions to talk about life and everything that’s happened since the time you were Everyday People. We see the growth in each other and the beautiful transformation that happens as people evolve. We say hello to past Everyday People, but also hello to new Everyday People. It’s not only the people we say goodbye to that are changing -- it’s us, too. We meet new Everyday People that will shape us and who we’ll shape, and we say hello to new extraordinary moments. My friend, we will change just as much as the people we’re saying goodbye to will change.
So in the middle of all of that, between the time when we’re Everyday People and the hellos after a while, we say messy goodbyes. Goodbyes with running mascara and red cheeks. Then, just like everyone else that we’re saying goodbye to, we meet new Everyday People and change and grow with them. Please, embrace this part of life; it sucks to say goodbye, but there is beautiful growth that takes place when we let go of our Everyday People and say hello to others. Because things won’t ever be the same, but that doesn’t mean that things are going to get worse. Things could also get so much better. Friends, let’s say hard goodbyes on Tuesday nights, and choose to say hello on a Wednesday morning.