I hate leaving.

[hmpf]

I used to love new beginnings, but new beginnings are based on some kind of ending preceding them.

Leaving places means leaving people; in many cases, thanks to the slow pace of my friendships, even before I really get to know them. The regret is often more a regret for something that might have been than for something that was. I hate that in particular: the feeling that I'm leaving without having made the best of the time I had with the people that crossed my path.

Even worse: it's my own frelling fault. My 'social life', or lack thereof here in Birmingham, was shaped from the beginning by the awareness that I would be leaving all too soon. Rather than getting emotionally involved, and risking the pain of being parted all too soon, I thus kept my distance, even more so than I usually do.

Even so, I let myself get close to some people. I am, after all, only human, and can't go completely without human contact. I will miss beebee852001 and tiniago when I'm back home, and probably ommadon. I will miss Scapekid - though she certainly is 'crazy' enough to fly to Germany on a whim, so there's some comfort... ;-) I will also miss, in a more abstract sense, Sci-Fi Soc - will regret having missed the chance of getting to know you all a bit better. Likewise, I will miss some of my fellow archaeology and Erasmus students. I did not even say goodbye to most of them; I wasn't close enough to any of them to warrant a real goodbye. What do you say, anyway, when you know you will never meet again? "Have a good rest of your life"?

So many missed chances.

It is a familiar pattern. It happened when I left Kiel. To some degree it happened when I left Hanau.

More painful in the long run, though, are of course the friendships that were more than just potential. Losing a real friendship hurts, and it takes years to get over the pain. I am still mourning friendships that drifted apart after high school. (Only in one case have I ever really stopped loving a friend.)

And yet it is so easy to lose a friendship. Geographical distance can do the trick so quickly. So can changes in lifestyle or outlook (though that is a slower, more gradual kind of loss).

Not every loss is a real loss, of course. Sometimes you drift apart, but not completely, and after a while you adjust to the new status of your relationship. I suppose that is what happens to most long-term friendships at some point.

Sometimes you get closer again after a while, as well.

My friendships back at home, I feel, are currently in some kind of limbo. I feel a great deal of attachment to my friends; I miss them very much. I dream of them all the time. Yet I have gotten out of touch. It is so easy to get out of touch if you can't devote hours each day to writing e-mails, or spend a fortune on phone calls. I have neglected many people almost criminally.

It's time I got back there and made up for it.

But I have nightmares that when I get back, everything will be different... 'Terra Firma' different. There have been deaths and weddings while I was gone, and shortly, there will be a birth (or maybe has already been). Everybody's lives have moved on. (Except mine, it sometimes seems to me.)

Will we still 'fit'?


***

I had a Methos plot bunny related to this feeling today. (It's a bunny I have had intermittently over the years - probably because the
feeling is nothing new to me.) Immortality means constantly leaving, and holding back, and keeping your distance. It also means constant new beginnings, of course. I wonder what is more dominant - the endings, or the beginnings?

Comments

[rossb.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean its looking more and more like I won't be staying up here next year and allthough I'll be closer I'm worried about losing friens I made here while knowing with some of them I probably won't manage it and wishing I'd kept in touch with those back in Harlow even though my interests have diverged alot from theirs and so we just don't have a lot to talk about.

It's a pretty universal human feeling, I guess.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

But it still depresses the hell out of me, especially since I just realised I have to leave on the 8th because I have to be somewhere on the 9th. :-(

[(Anonymous)]

Hi hmpf!

I can assure you that "real Friends" will still be there for you even if you don't write them the occasional email every now and then. They refuse to forget you as you don't forget them. ;)
At least that's what i experienced from persistently neglecting almost all of my friendships with people for months (and years sometimes). What is very relieving for me: Most of my friends know me well enough to know what to expect from me - which does not include regular calls and mails with personal updates. But whenever i feel the need to talk to them, they are still there for me.

And i don't own a live journal like you, where all of your friends with an internet connection can stay posted.
I am quite confident that noone here is expecting further "personal care" from you. The knowledge that you're keeping everyone in your thoughts should be enough. ;)

Of course sometimes lives and interests move apart. One experiences that there is not much left to tell each other. But that is alright then. People change - people move on. No need to worry about that. No need to worry about not fitting.

I share your feelings about missed opportunities though. I get this feeling quite often. And i always blame myself. But that's life.. or Murphy (http://www.reallifecomics.com/daily.php?strip_id=705).

Cheers, Nager (keeping you in his thoughts)

Thanks, Nager!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I feel really strange. I'm really, really looking forward to see you guys again - probably in about five weeks! :-)

But I also have just spent another evening with my new Scapers tiniago and beebee852001 and that was such great fun and *they* are such great fun... and there's Scapekid and elliejane, etc.

And I'm sort of already missing them in advance. It hurts.

I guess I'll have to be bad to the environment and make frequent RyanAir trips to Britain... there's a con we might scape in Hinckley in February, and there's WorldCon in August '05... and maybe I can make some more connections in the jewellery trade here and get some kind of job or whatever for next summer, or something.

I just don't want my ties with this country and the people I know here to be severed as quickly as the ones I had with Kiel were.

[ommadon.livejournal.com]

Hey come on now, cheer up :) We'll all still be here you know, besides which I think I can safely say that we all expect regular visits so you won't get that much oppertunity to end up out of touch with us!

You know...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

you're also always welcome in Frankfurt. If you like.

[dunkle-feuer.livejournal.com]

Methos plot bunny : It also means constant new beginnings, of course. I wonder what is more dominant - the endings, or the beginnings?

Well, I'm not an immortal, but in my case it always depended on my current situation and mood. Sometimes I was very glad to leave everything behind and just saw the new beginning, sometimes it was hard enough so that I wasn't able to see the chance for a new beginning and suffered the ending for quite a long time, and sometimes (more often than not) it is a mix of both...

Losing a real friendship hurts, and it takes years to get over the pain. I am still mourning friendships that drifted apart after high school.

Yep, me, too, no matter how it happened. And the drifting apart, as normal as it is, doesn't make it any easier. On the contrary. If you're aware of what is happening, but finding yourself unable to stop it, it hurts just as much as loosing a friendship straight out.

That said: Not every change has to be bad. Maybe you will discover that you're closer to your friends back home than you were before you left, because of the time that has passed and the things you (and they) experienced. Or maybe some of you have moved on, but that is life and it will offer you to the same time new opportunities, new chances, which doesn't have to be something bad either.

Don't worry about not fitting in when you get back. Just wait and see how it will turn out, BABE. I'm sure everything will be fine in the end.

You know...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

one of the nicer things about the kind of long distance friendship I have with you is that this 'drifting apart due to geographical reasons' at least isn't an issue, as you already start out with a great geographical distance!

And I must say that LJ is great, as well. It's so much easier to stay in touch this way, somehow.

BTW. I'm listening to my new, really old Midnight Oil album now. It's so... new wave, or something. And it's true, the singer can't sing, but somehow, I *like* the way he screams and 'sings'. *g*

A shame they apparently disbanded in 2002. I didn't know until a few days ago, when I did some web research... Means I'll never have a chance to see them in concert, and that's a frelling shame. They were supposed to be a really great live band.

From Scapekid.

[(Anonymous)]

I should be offended if you didn't expect me to regularly appear on trans-channel ryanair flights.

---(o)-(o)---

[herdivineshadow]

*hugs*

I think that we'll stay in touch through livejournal... or at least keep up to date with what's going on in each other's lives... and with the brumscifisoc community you'll be able to see what's going on with scifi.

Well. To a point. There'll be less of the drunkeness in the lj community.

Oh, I'm perfectly able to get drunk virtually!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

And, theoretically, there's nothing that keeps us from drinking together, apart, is there? All you need is alcohol on both ends of the internet connection. ;-)

Not that I drink a lot, usually. ;-)