Why are goodbyes so hard, yet hellos so easy? This is the question I asked myself four years ago while writing my college essay. Even after everything I’ve learned during my time at Sacred Heart University, I’m still not sure I have the answer.
Looking back, I try to remember what I was so afraid of. Was it simply graduating and going to college, or was it my fear of change, of becoming someone new? When I look in the mirror today, I still see the same person I was, but she looks a little different now.
The first thing I notice is the bangs I impulsively cut last year, an attempt to look more like “myself,” returning to a style I have not rocked since second grade, when I cut all my hair off to be Velma for Halloween.
Next, I see the slight shadows under my eyes from countless late nights writing articles and editing videos, a path that younger me would have never expected when she came to college with absolutely no clue what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
Finally, my eyes are drawn to two faint lines tracing the outline of a smile—one that has only grown wider and more frequent, thanks to the amazing people I’ve found along the way, who never fail to make me laugh and are kind enough to laugh at my jokes, too.
What was I so afraid of? I am still the same wonderfully weird girl I was four years ago.
Goodbyes are hard, so why should graduating be any different? The word goodbye itself feels misleading. It begins with something hopeful, “good,” yet always arrives at an ending. Hello, on the other hand, feels light; it is both expected and full of possibility. When you are young, you chase this kind of electricity, the excitement of something or someone new. My freshman year, I said countless hellos, greeting each new person as an opportunity to grow and change. However, at that moment, I never thought that I would be saying goodbye just four years later– but I wonder if that’s the point.
Maybe that’s why goodbyes feel so hard—because we don’t let ourselves see them coming. We often forget about goodbyes until it is too late. In the moment, we feel infinite, as if life will always stay just like this and things will never change. But as we all come to learn, sometimes gently and sometimes not, that is not true. We will graduate. We will move away. We will move on and look back at these moments as memories.
This time I want to say “goodbye” differently. Not with regret or sadness, mourning the things and people I did not appreciate enough when I had the chance. This time, I am going to remember the “goodbye,” holding on a little tighter to these moments knowing that they will not last forever– and maybe that’s ok.
