‘I can feel my heart pounding my ribs, wanting to be set free, but I dig my nails deep into my skin and hold her in. It is our last goodbye. It is the end of a beautiful chapter. We had our time together, and now, I have to let you go.’
There is something so beautiful yet tragic about relationships, with best friends becoming strangers, lovers becoming indifferent and friends becoming enemies. At times, you lose pieces of yourselves to the person you love, the cities you travel to, the pages of the books you soil. There’s beauty in goodbyes, last kisses, and final hugs.
The bittersweet endings of relationships serve as a reminder of life’s transience and the value of reveling in each moment spent with those you love. Albeit, they may leave you with a heavy heart, they also gift you with the ability to find the silver lining in every farewell. They show you that even after you bid farewell, their love and shared experiences will always be a part of you, much like your footprints in the sands of time.
Perhaps, for me, the worst goodbyes are at the airport. It’s suffocating, exhausting, and utterly crippling to watch someone you thought would stay dissolve into the horizon. There is a choking inside, a lump in my throat that refuses to let go, tides that refuse to settle, hands that beg for one last touch. The final few minutes begin to feel like an eternity.
Every ending, however important, carries its melancholy, an ache only you can feel, memories only you can hold onto, and death only you can die. Oceans of a hundred vows keep your mouth full yet the words refuse to spill. But you must let go. Their nostalgia will create its cities and towns, paint your bluest sky the darkest grey, and haunt you forever. But you must gradually let go as their memories will turn you into a stronger and more resilient individual.
Hence, even if painful, it’s a warm goodbye until you meet each other again, somewhere between nightfall and the crack of dawn beholding one another, shining brighter than the greatest galaxies, louder than the fanciest operas, and more infinite than the enormous infinities.