Where is the good in goodbye?

Goodbye.  That is a word that has shown up in my life way too often in the past couple years.  I am always saying goodbye. And it doesn't get easier either.  In my perfect little world all of my friends and family would live in a small town and be able to walk or ride your bikes to each others houses, just as it was growing up for me.  You wouldn't have to say goodbye, instead you could say "see you tomorrow!" But instead you grow up, life chages, decisions are made and you all end up living in new places.  Granted, change is good and new places are exciting but it still can be hard.  I have learned moving away that you don't make friends like you do back in Iowa.  Making friends is genuinely hard in new places, especially in your mid 20's when you are out of college and don't know anyone.  All of my friends that I have in my life and continue to surround myself around are friends I have always known or are from Iowa and can easily relate to me.  I don't know what I would do without my cellphone, or facebook, or Skype.  How did people ever survive without it? Technology these days makes long distance friendships so much easier and when I can see my friends faces right on my computer screen and have a conversation, I feel like they are sitting in the room with me.  Everytime I go home to visit and have to say goodbye, it sucks.  Or when I have visitors and they leave me, I feel like part of me left with them.  Can my perfect world please exist so I don't have to feel this way?Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn't work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say goodbye.  I hate goodbyes.  I know what I need.  I need more hellos.

I went through a seriously hard goodbye this week.  My best friend down here and the one who has been my rock and made Florida so much better for me, left me Friday for Atlanta.  Her husband got a job opportunity he couldn't pass up so they had to make the decision to leave.  Seeing that apartment empty where I have spent almost every weekend the past two years of my life felt like something was being ripped out of me.  It was such an awful feeling.  I felt like the day I saw my parents house empty after 25 years of living there.  It was all I had ever known.  And living here in Florida, being in that apartment and being with the Garvins is all I've really known here.  I could always count on them to be there and it was so nice having the feeling of being back home with them.  Everything from the Iowa Club, to Field Day, to my pool weekends, or hotel beach stays...just everything, was all with them.  So now a piece ofo me feels empty and I feel like I'm starting all over on my own again.  I know that may sound weird and its hard to explain in words, it's just that feeling I have.  I feel like I'm starting all over again.  What will my weekends consist of now? It's just the unknown feeling that scares me.   Is Florida the place for me still? Do I want to be here when all my friends are elsewhere? All these thoughts running through my head and I just don't have an answer to any of them.  Yes it's so nice I have my parents here and yes I have Heidi three hours away.  Three hours doesn't seem like much, but it's not that easy.  The real world tends to get in the way with making it easy. But regardless, I am thankful to have that option. 

I just found this quote and I think it's the perfect way to end this post....
"How lucky I am to have known someone who was so hard to say goodbye to."