Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

I’m terrible with goodbyes. And they are everywhere. Each day has an end. Each book. Each adventure. Each person.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my trip to Ireland and my 3 months spent in Italy. It is a deep sorrow that needs to be learned to live with and accept. But before the goodbyes, there’s life. There’s love. There’s hope.

Desires can be traps. To crave something you can’t have is a sorrow deeper than a grave. Part of me craves to go back to Italy. The other part of me craves to go back to Italy with the people I had been there with, but that would mean going back in time. I can now only relive those memories in my mind. I can hit replay on the laughs, but I won’t hear them there again. I can imagine laying out on a soccer field, but we won’t again. I can see the vineyards, the buildings, the mountains in my mind, but it’s unlikely I’ll ever get to see them again except in pictures. I can tell stories, but they will only be stories. The others will never really know, no matter how good of a story teller I am.

To experience is to live. But to live is to lose. For everything we’ve experienced will eventually come to an end.

Living in the past is like being dead in the present. I look back on my study abroad in Italy, my spring break in Ireland, and can smile at the amazing chance that I was given. But then the other half of me misses it to the point of tears.

Parting is such sweet sorrow. It has been almost 5 months since I’ve been back, but I have yet to find the strength to accept the goodbye. 

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People Pleasin

I am a people pleaser. It wasn’t until today that I realized that it is not exactly a good thing.

I try and put others’ happiness before my own. If they are having fun, then I’m more likely to have fun knowing that they are enjoying themselves.

Since I leave for Italy a week from tomorrow, I’ve been realizing just how many friends I have and how hard it is to give everyone a time slot in my schedule.

People like me get walked on a lot. My sister said if people want to see me, then they will fit their schedules to mine, not mine to theirs. I think I have always fit my schedule to everyone else’s.

The bad thing about that, is that somehow everyone’s free time is at the same time. The trouble with that, is that I am a part of a lot of groups of people, and not all the people in those groups would have fun together because they enjoy different stuff and wouldn’t really connect like I do.

Now I am forced to put some people before others, and I hate doing that because I don’t like people feeling like they are less important to me than the other people I am seeing.

It is good to think of others, don’t get me wrong, but I think some of us spend so much time trying to make others happy, that we forget to make ourselves happy.

Any kind of relationship is a two-way thing. I am someone who has gotten into the habit of basically letting the other person stand there while I walk all the way across the line to their side, instead of having them meet me half way. If people want to see you, be with you, spend time with you, then make them do some of the work too. If you are one of the lazier people, then get up off your ass and prove to the other person that you care.

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