Goodbye, it doesn't sound so bad does it? Well not if all is well in your life. When your relationships are well balanced and healthy, when work is interesting and challenging - when you are achieving the goals set by you in life, goodbye is not such a bad word. Goodbye is simply bidding farewell to your friends after spending a pleasant evening.
Sadly though goodbye can be, for many of us a cold and empty sound. For myself saying goodbye is one of the hardest, things I've had to come to terms with. Infact it is something that today still causes me considerable grief and emotional pain. I believe that I have always taken goodbye to be a total cut off. For example when a long, involved relationship comes to an end I feel lost and abandoned and very frightened. Saying goodbye, for me only seems to underline those negative, hard to deal with emotions.
I truly believe that I have never really said goodbye to anyone, not when my father died nor when anyone of my three long standing relationships came to an end. Even in the past when saying goodbye to my therapist June, I have felt untold amounts of panic and loss. Will she come back, will I really be able to see her again next week. To say goodbye, to me, is to finally cut the cord, let go, stand on my own.
However how can we expect to move forward in life, with a fresh and healthy attitude, if we cannot say goodbye and understand and mean it. Personally I think I have always held on emotionally long after the final parting, perhaps deep inside somewhere not really accepting it was all over. If I say goodbye does that mean I no longer exist for the person who I am now parted from or indeed for myself, do I not count anymore.
Perhaps by thinking these things I don't feel I have anything to offer to anyone else, all my emotions are spent and belong to and are kept by my ex-partners these emotions are held for them. Also if I truly loved them then surely I cannot say goodbye and move on and offer new things to someone else, do I not have to save myself for them? It's a guilt trip.
Therefore I have carried with me old deep scars. Anger, disappointment, sadness, confusion and distrust. I have not had the capacity courage or knowledge to know how to say goodbye, in a healthy adult way'. I have been a child, lost and clinging - definitely an overwhelming, negative, crippling parting, and a destructive restricting start to something new.
Saying goodbye is not easy, it does take a great deal of personal strength it takes time, we need, I need the support of my friends, my therapist. With that help I can start to adjust, to re-learn how to say goodbye and not 'die' along with it. Saying goodbye and being upset is not a weakness, saying goodbye and surviving is not a shameful thing. Saying goodbye to one area of your life now over, surely makes a healthy space in which to say hello to another.