Farewell for the present

I've always been quite good at 'goodbyes'. Partly because there are very few people that I genuinely care about and partly because I've always known that, in parting with those few, there was the inevitability of seeing them again. Another part of it may be that it's almost always been me leaving, me going somewhere new, me leaving someone behind. Was it easy to say goodbye to my family and my very best of friends knowing that it'd be at least 9 months before seeing any of them again? Easier than you would think so. Very much easier than you would think. Do I miss them? More than anything - but that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't that hard to leave in the first place.

This has been much different. Here goes good friends all of them, back to their homes all across the world, people that have occupied nearly every day of my existence in the last 4 months, people who I may not have known very long in the grand scheme of things but who nonetheless will be on my mind just as much as my oldest friends, maybe more. Here I am, left behind. Left behind in a foreign country I suppose, but still left behind. Glasgow (and the rest of the UK) gets less and less foreign every day, as things are wont to do.

John, James, Rachael are gone tonight. Ryan and Peter aren't far behind them. I'm leaving too I suppose, but only for a while. I'm coming back. They've all gone to New York, Minnesota, Georgia, Michigan, and New Zealand. There is a definitive uncertainty as to whether I'll see any of them ever again. Would I like to? Hells yes, unequivocally so. Will I? Seems really really unlikely. Which I think is what's getting to me the most right now - that disbelief in spatial seperation. How something so commonplace that it became natural and expected can be transformed into something nearly impossible, just by a thousand miles, is a bit heavy a concept for me to weigh on right now.

I have a book. I bring it with me everywhere and have gotten most all of my friends to sign it. I'd like to share what Peter wrote. Him and Ryan both are at about the same place I am right now. They leave tomorrow. Pete lives in the northernmost tip of New Zealand and that fact is dragging on him quite a bit. Compared to him, I really shouldn't complain. At any rate, here is what he wrote in my book. I think it's quite beautiful.

" This is the family we made
This is who we are
This is where we stand
Our hopes and dreams
have led us here
And may they lead us
together again "

And who said that engineers couldn't be good at words?