Good-byes Suck

Tomorrow I will say good-bye to someone I care about a great deal. It's not a permanent good-bye... he's simply leaving town. But it still feels bad.

There are people who enter your life and affect it profoundly in a short period of time. Through them, you learn lessons -- about Life, about people, about relationships, about yourself. Sometimes the lessons are gentle; sometimes they are uncomfortable; sometimes they're just plain hard. (They are always valuable.)

There are people who enter your life and change your perspective, forcing you to view things you know to be so from alternate angles, making them look different and unfamiliar.

There are people who enter your life and with whom you connect quickly and completely and you know, immediately, that you will be friends for a long, long time.

I've been fortunate in my life to know several friends like that -- people who quickly became (and have remained) incredibly important to me. They are my inner circle -- the people I go to when I need support and when I don't want to feel all alone in the world.

This friend is such a friend.

But inner circle or not, good-bye is still on the agenda.

I have gotten used to my inner circle widening to encompass different states... it covers oceans and islands and continents.

Missing people I love is not new to me. I do it all the time.

But it's never easy.

Good-byes suck.