My First Goodbye

There is a specific, heavy silence that fills the car on the drive to the airport. It’s a pressurized quiet, more substantial than the suitcases in the trunk, vibrating with the knowledge that a fracture is about to happen. After weeks of shared meals, late-night noodles, and the effortless shorthand of being truly known and understood, the landscape outside the window begins to blur. You aren't just moving toward a terminal; you are moving toward the moment your heart splits in two.

Living between two worlds means home is no longer a coordinate on a map. Instead, it’s a fractured reality where you are constantly leaving one piece of yourself behind to go and find the other. To love people across oceans is to live in a perpetual in-between. When I am here, I carry the ghost of my daily life elsewhere; when I am there, I ache for the bustling warmth I’ve just left. It is a beautiful, exhausting duality—the physical impossibility of ever having everyone I love in a single room.

The grief of those passed is also quiet but constant. It’s the wishing that they were here for the small things, not just the milestones. And in the same way, there is a grief of being close in feeling, but far in distance. It’s the realization that I have to choose one life at the expense of another, that one life is more real than the other. Yet, amidst those feelings, there is a profound sense of gratitude. To be missed this much, to feel this much difficulty in leaving, is the highest proof of love. We have built a space where we can share the good and the bad, where laughter is easy and respect is a given. That bond doesn't thin out across the miles, it just stretches.

As the gates approach, I trade the physical warmth of a hug for the digital pings of a video call. I board the plane with a soul full of longing and a heart that is forever half-somewhere else. But I go knowing that I am loved, and that home isn't a single dot on the globe-it’s a feeling scattered across it, held together by the people who make the leaving so hard to

do.

•••

Dedicated to those who all gave their love to me so generously and consistently without hesitation, it filled a space in my heart I didn't realize was empty. I’ll always cherish how loved you all you made me feel.