As an expat, I am fast approaching the season of people leaving. Due to the school season and summer, many families come and go during the summer. I approach this summer with bittersweet, piercing and complex feelings.
I have developed wonderful relationships with my global traveling and working friends. I have these strong working relationships. I have real soul/Seoul sisters. I have people who taught me, coached me, traveled with me, cried on my shoulder, and some who knows things my husband does not even know.
So, how do I say goodbye?
With one friend, I said on a stoop with her, drinking a beer while she smoked a cigarette, the night before her flight. It was a lovely send-off.
My triathlon training buddy asked me to go on moving errands with her throughout the month, to spend quality time with me. We have a spa date and a girls dinner to cap it off this month.
I have three more soul sisters to say goodbye to, and they will be emotional goodbyes. I know I will see them again. But it won’t be the same.
Also, during this Year of the Pandemic of 2020, we all drew closer in a way that I didn’t have with other friends across the world. These friendships are singular in that way.
I am feeling emotional, and some je ne sais quois feeling of deep sadness and deep joy altogether that I do have these deep and tragic goodbyes coming up….