How to say goodbye

If I ever could say goodbye.

And there have to be others like me out there. Have you never said goodbye to a friend/family member/lover/etc. for a long time and felt like the moment of "truth" was painfully suspended in the air, until it was too late to say anything? You reach over and hug the person tightly, and then a little tighter as if the contact could (and can it?) say what the embarassed thoughts or otherwise tear-induced knot on the throat wont materialise into words? Or are you one of those (like me), who just grins all the way throughout and then have another moment of suspended reality as you and the other walk away from each other and suddenly the tears can no longer be contained?

I have been living away from home for 5 years and I have had to do this one too many times. Even before that, when my French sons-of-diplomat friends kept switching school as much as their parents' their job emplacements. Even at I****'s mom's funeral. And it is not that I am particularly shy about my emotions (if anything ask Chili, he'll tell you), it's just hard to do. Nietzsche surely said something about that, about the sense of guilt from which our societies are erected, the horrible feeling/necessity of holding back for a good reason that we cannot comprehend.

And then, there is the moment when you have to say goodbye. When there are no written promises and no set plans.

Even when I used to leave the summercamps I went to when I was younger, the empty promise was that everyone would keep in touch, that everyone would still be best friends, even after 4-7 weeks of joint life experience. Thank Facebook for that today really, but otherwise, it would have never happened. Those were plans then and look where it got us: having to wait for another restrictive, alienated and categorizing stunt of capitalism to put us all in the same virtual containement.

What I keep playing and re-playing in my head everytime I go to sleep is the dreadful moment when I will have to say goodbye to Chili (my boyfriend). In one month. For an indefinite amount of time. The picture in my head is always the same: eyes closed I see a small airport and very little people around. I know it wont happen like this, but it isn't the setting that is so full of pathos, it's the feelings that I am experiencing. The pathos of the setting is on the contrary a reflection of how it feels at this very moment. Our hands are clasped together, our fingers interdigitate for a last time. Then I make some sort of silence-filling face expression that I know will make him laugh and then silence again. The fingers retrieve into the palms, the hands separate and open full-armed into a hug. A long hug. Then the crying, the uncontrollable, hyperventilating crying that feels like Death suffocating you with its long black cape.

'Forza Yukita', he says as he finally liquifies his own emotion. Subtlely, but real down one cheek and then the other.

We are apart, physically, our bodies half a meter in distance. And to the very last second of our time together we make plans to make it work, but with no dates, no guarantees. I love yous and te amos in all the languages that have embelished our relationship for the past two years...then there's nothing left but to turn around...

After this, in my vision, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. The story melts into a blank page, a big curtain falls down, I think I lose consciousness, I think I lose my life. I cease to hyperventilate and I cannot feel the tears down to the tip of my chin anymore. In fact, I just dont feel anything. It is like my entire being is suspended in the air, paused in that last Orphean glance before his return to life and her return to death, and yet congealed right there, forever.