Hello Goodbye

The theme of this week's Sunday Scribblings is "Goodbyes-who have you had to say goodbye to? What kind of goodbyes?". As I mulled this around for a while I decided that the goodbyes I've experienced in the largest quantities have been goodbyes to ideas of myself.

I vaguely remember the ideas of myself from early childhood but my longest standing vocational dream was to be a teacher. I thought I would teach writing. I was in love with this version of myself who was knowledgeable, kind, and talented. I also saw myself married to a dark haired romantic man who would provide for me financially. I saw two children, girls, in our future and I figured all of this would happen by the time I reached the ripe age of 24.

In the first two years of high school I decided I didn't want to be a teacher. I wanted to be a writer instead. Why teach English when I could be a writer? I saw myself getting married to my high school boyfriend and having two children, girls, and achieving all this by the age of 24.

By the time high school was over, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to get a job and get married to my boyfriend. I think teenage hormones dumbed me down.

I went to community college and dropped out when I got a job offer I couldn't refuse. I thought I'd made a lot of money, save up and go back to school someday. Then I met my future husband who was intent on finishing his degree. We put all our energy towards his future. I said goodbye to all my dreams except the one of having a husband and a family.

over ten years things went sour in my relationship. I decided having children wouldn't be a good idea. I had stayed at the same job for 10 years even though I found it completely uninteresting. I revisited the idea of being a writer or a teacher but only while daydreaming.

Depression set in. I felt like a ghost of a person but I remembered a time when I was full of promise. I dug up the goodbyes and rototilled them in my mind. Which dreams were foolish and which were ones I should rekindle? I rototilled for months in my mind. I wrote in journals, I took long walks. I talked to counselors. And I began dreaming again.

This time I saw myself single, completing a degree in English just because I loved the subject. I saw myself making my own way in the world, providing for myself. I decided I didn't want to have children. I decided I needed to parent myself for a while instead.

These days I teach people for a living and I'm good at it. I write nearly every day and it fulfills a need in me. I may never get married again and that's OK. I don't want children. So, I've let that idea go completely. If there's one certainty about goodbye it is that this world is full of loss already, we must never say goodbye to ourselves. Acknowledging what we choose and do not choose to say goodbye to is healing and empowering.