Saying Goodbye

I have left many places, many people, and some have left me.  A rare few are still with me no matter where I go.  I don't know what I am looking for, or what I am fleeing from, but I have left a lot of places. In some, I have made my mark, left a legacy; in others, my presence is nothing but an ancient whisper, whispered without much sentiment.  I am not gregarious, I don't  make friends easily.  The challenge in the new environment enthralls me, the prospect of reestablishing myself with others, over and over again, tires me.  I have left a lot of places, but those places are still with me, those faces still smiling in my soul.

I think about old friends, not lost, but maybe abandoned.  When I think about my stays, I sometimes envy those friends rooted there in that place, time and space.  I have no idea what it would feel like to be somewhere my whole life - yes, I envy them, for a few minutes anyway. It is not an enduring fantasy for me, as I know I would not have loved such a life, more importantly, such a life would not have loved me. 

I can imagine staying in one place, one place that would learn all my sins, all my weaknesses.  I can't imagine people forgiving me though, and I think that is why I eventually leave.  If I leave, pay that penance, I can start again in a new place, one step ahead of my last post.  Maybe I am a Buddhist, an impatient Buddhist not waiting to die to be reincarnated.  For I am working towards perfection, towards purification.  I get better as I grow, as I travel, but I don't get to take the most valuable assets from place to place, my friends and family.

I have seen wonderful and horrible things, learned partial languages, proven certain abilities in dozens of trials and tests, and I have carried the memory of those lessons with me, planting bits and pieces wherever I go.  Maybe Johnny Appleseed was a Buddhist too.

The goodbyes are the taxation on my trip, the real life price for my expiation.  Whatever I choose to pursue, costs me that which I have previously acquired.  Fair enough I suppose, but a sad price to pay for atonement.  I don't like saying goodbye, and I usually have only two mechanisms available to me.  I either bury the burden of the loss and gloss over it with a simple and distant parting, or I crash painfully, and try to drag the essence of the relationship with me, whether or not its owner follows.  Loneliness is what follows either option though, and the former hurts the worst.  It is one thing to be alone by your own doing, with a nameless, faceless companion absent from your life, it is quite another to find yourself alone with the jealous doppelganger of a loved one driving away any new friends, any new suitors.  One is a dark hole in your heart waiting patiently to be filled, the other is a dishonest emptiness, never to be filled, never to be quenched.

Don't mistake this as a coy contrivance designed for pity or sorrow.  This is the reality of a journeyman who has no home, no refuge to circle back upon.  A journeyman who will keep on moving, either tilting at windmills or slaying real dragons; thankful for his weapons and armor, his knowledge and his tools, deploring though his memory, and the vestiges of his relationships, scattered and strewn behind him.  He runs the risk of asking then, if each goodbye is instead a failure, each departure a cowardice, each new place the false promise of redemption.  He will know one day, when he thinks he has stopped, dares to turn and look back, and faces finally that which has followed him, if anything at all.