I’m not starting because I fear the end

I have a hard time saying goodbye. To situations and habits, but mostly to people I hold dear — may they be real or fictional.

The first time I noticed that was after a Konfirmationsfreizeit (a church retreat, part of preparing for confirmation), the first time as a teenager I spent time with a group of other teenagers for a longer time. I remember afterwards standing at the stove at home, sadly making scrambled eggs for myself and thinking “Normally, we would now be finishing the meal and doing the washing up.” Normally, like the last four days were how I usually lived.

Before that experience, I considered myself a bit of a loner. Oh, I had friends, good friends, but I was also very content being by myself. Afterwards, this changed a bit.

Afterwards, when I had friends, I tented to cling, to spend as much time as possible with them. I was always among the last to leave a party or go to bed, and one of the first to be on my feet again in the morning. You could call it a fear of missing out. (#FOMO, yeah, even in the (late) 80s, 90s and #oughts.

It made it sometimes hard to move on — when others moved away or when I had to go to a new place. I remember especially vividly not being able to let go of my friend A. I even tried to go to the same university and studying the same thing as her, but that backfired and stranded me in a city I didn’t like, studying something that wasn’t for me. And it wasn’t even in the same city as her.

Another time I remember being heartbroken about leaving friends behind was the end of Buffy. Yes, I know: a TV show with fictional characters. But those characters had become so dear to me and their friendships had filled a void I had in me at the time (and still do, to a degree). I was sad and lonely, and felt forgotten and left behind at the end of the show.

And I loathed feeling sad, not only in the case of the end of Buffy, but in general. I did everything in my power to avoid it: eating a lot, watching other series and movies, compulsively surfing the web. Anything to avoid feeling sad.

I still loathe feeling sad, but I learned — and am learning — other, more helpful ways to cope with it.

But what I realized lately is that this fear of the end has been holding me back for years — and it still is. I know in my head that staying put and letting nobody new in my life is unhealthy. That temporary friendships are better than being alone. And that you can never predict whether a new friendship will be a bonfire for the moment or a lighthouse for decades.

But my heart is still playing catch-up with this. At the moment, I feel more comfortable moving abroad alone than looking for new people to meet where I am.

If you read this far, how about you? How do you feel about endings? And how do you deal with those feels?

P.S.: Well the thing with friendships, that’s not 100% true. Thanks to the incredible people on the puttytribe, I made some new friends over the last year. And the transient nature of the community has made me a bit more comfortable with the notion of temporary relationships. Yay #internet! Now I just have to apply what I learned to the meat space as well. And follow my own advice to build some new friendships.